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TILLAGE OF THE HEART 

OR THE 

CULTIVATION OF GOODNESS 




C^t 4?A *lZc^c*S (U^*rL£^f Arr>+v<i4_ 



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Tillage of the Heart 

OR THE 

Cultivation of Goodness 



(By 

ALVAH SABIN HOBART 
w 

Professor 
New Testament Interpretation 
Crozer Theological Seminary 

Jluthor "Our Silent Partner" 



AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

PHILADELPHIA 

BOSTON ST. LOUIS 

CHICAGO ATLANTA 









Copyright 1909 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published December, 1909 



3LA2529- 



PREFACE 

The chapters of this book, as the reader 
will see, are not essays, but sermons. They 
were uttered in the Calvary Baptist Church, 
Washington, D. C, as vacation sermons, in 
the summer of 1909. They retain their 
original colloquial form, as nearly as it 
could be reproduced. 

I have been much impressed for several 
years that the Christian life of our country 
needs a more persistent and hopeful culti- 
vation than it gets. We are in an age of 
criticism. The man who denounces gets a 
hearing. We need more encouragement to 
high living. The Saviour was a man of 
wondrous hope for mankind. Having been 
led to see his hopefulness I have been 
greatly desirous to utter his word of hope 
to a wider audience than any single con- 
gregation. Hence this book. It goes forth 

5 



6 Preface 

with the prayer that it may be read, not 
as a literary production, asking anybody's 
praise, but as a loving word of hope to 
sinners, who like the author, are seeking to 
be better than they are, and expecting to 
succeed. " Thanks be to God who giveth us 
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

a. s. H. 

Crozer Theological Seminary 
October, 1909 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Essential Requirements .... 9 
II. Examination of the Field. . . 30 

III. Nature's Assistance 51 

IV. Specific Helps for Uprooting 

Specific Faults 74 

V. The Aim of Our Tillage, and 

How We Learn It 93 

VI. What the Ideal Is 113 

VII. The Power to Win 133 

VIII. The Results of Our Tillage. 157 



ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS 

"Having therefore these promises, dearly be- 
loved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness 
of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the 
fear of God."— 2 Cor. j : i. 

"Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear 
much fruit" — John 15 : 8. 

IN driving through New England it is not 
unusual to see little farms adjoining one 
another which seem to belong to differ- 
ent climates, and countries. One of them is 
ready to be abandoned by its hopeless ten- 
ants. Its fields are bare, its fences poor. 
The few stray cattle that dot its pastures 
like the " here and there a traveler " of 
the " narrow way " are lean as Pharaoh's 
kine in Joseph's dream. The buildings lack 
shingles and paint. The children are ill- 
kempt, and ill-mannered. No man wonders 
that the sons grow up and " go away to the 
city." 

The other is " a little paradise." Rich 

9 



io Tillage of the Heart 

harvests await the reapers. Good fences 
and well-cut hedges divide field from field. 
Fine dairy cattle feed numerous on the ver- 
dant hillsides. Good carriages stand under 
the wagon-shed ; well-dressed and intelligent 
children run and sing in the meadows. 
Thrift and intelligence are in all quarters. 
The country is redeemed in your estimate, 
and you say, " How delightful to live here ! " 

These two farms are of the same soil. 
They lie open to the same sun, and draw 
their moisture from impartial heavens. But 
one of them is tilled; the other is only 
tenanted. The first is neglected in the belief 
that the land is exhausted and cannot be 
made to produce. The other is tilled under 
the " scientific farming " which is coming 
into honor in our days. 

These two farms are symbolic of two 
ways of living the Christian life. One 
way is pessimistic, and unthrifty. The 
other is hopeful and diligent. The un- 
thrifty man forgets that God told Adam 
that he was to till the ground. The other 
thinks all the time on the promise that 
seed-time and harvest shall not fail. 

This failure to cultivate is found else- 
where as well. We have heard singers 



Essential Requirements 1 1 

whose voice and expression and personality 
were such that to hear them sing was an 
inspiration to good deeds. A certain inde- 
scribable quality about their singing made it 
reach the heart of the hearers, and predis- 
posed them to accept the gospel message. 
We have heard others who sang as loud, 
and as correctly, perhaps, but they moved 
no hearts. 

There have been editors who, without 
any seeming effort, gave to the public far- 
seeing reviews of the political situation in 
pure but idiomatic American language. 
They kept the readers in touch with the 
undercurrent of affairs, and educated the 
nation in matters of State. But one day the 
" junior " tried his hand at writing. The 
people read the editorials and, with per- 
plexed look, they said : " The editor must 
have gone on his vacation this week." 
Something was lacking, but the people felt 
rather than understood the lack. There are 
ministers whose thought is so clear, and 
whose expression is so fitting, that the 
words they speak sink down into men's 
minds like sugar into a cup of tea, sweeten- 
ing as it goes — dissolving at last and losing 
its own identity, but making men better in 



12 Tillage of the Heart 

all their lives. We remember such sermons. 
They flavored truth to our minds. They 
became to us inexhaustible inspirations to 
spiritual activities. Some of them have 
been the determining influences in our 
course of life. Then we have heard other 
ministers. They said to themselves, " Oh, 
it is very easy to be a good preacher. Men 
are hungry for the ' simple gospel/ What 
we need to do is to tell men about Jesus, 
warm the emotions with a few stories of 
conversion, and the thing is done." But 
alas ! it does not stay done. The com- 
munity is not made more Christlike by it. 
It is the old story over again. The poet 
Horace, in his " Ars Poetica," wrote to 
young Piso something like this : " Good 
poetry is that kind which, when one reads 
it, seems to be very easy to write. But 
when he attempts to write it, he sweats 
much and does not succeed." The truth is 
that good things in any department of life 
are the combination of purpose and skill; 
the product of intelligent and persevering 
effort. One can get a heavy glass dish 
with intricate pattern pressed upon it for 
fifty cents. He can get the same glass and 
the same pattern cut by hand for fifteen dol- 



Essential Requirements 13 

lars. One can get a painting of good color, 
representing fine faces and beautiful land- 
scape quite cheaply. But that which has 
by slow and delicate touch expressed the 
artist's conception of Mary, or of Jesus, 
costs a fortune. One pays not only for the 
time of the painter, but for the sighs and 
prayers and struggles — the very life experi- 
ences which qualified him for his work. 

The sermons which thrill and uplift you 
are born in prayer. They embody the 
minister's study of human life to find its 
needs ; his study of the Bible to find the sup- 
ply of those needs; the long cultivation of 
language to gain the power of expression 
which reaches the heart; and the cross- 
bearing spirit which gives the sympathy 
that sufifuses them all. 

The poetry of Horace was the product of 
a poetic soul in partnership with a poet's 
training. Neither poetry nor piety is auto- 
matic. A combination of heart and work, 
of purpose and training, is a necessity for a 
high grade of goodness. We have the first 
part; there is abundant supply of prefer- 
ence for goodness in the abstract. The dis- 
honest would prefer to be honest if it did 
not cost too much. Every man would pre- 



14 Tillage of the Heart 

fer to have all his money " untainted." We 
may want reputation so much that we will 
accept a hollow one; but we all would 
rather have a solid one. Plenty of people 
would be Christians of the best sort if it did 
not deprive them of something which they 
think is a necessity for their enjoyment. 
If the road to goodness was as wide and 
smooth as the road to something less than 
goodness, the Saviour's words about the 
two ways could be reversed. 
The hymn now reads: 

Broad is the road that leads to death, 
And thousands walk together there; 

But Wisdom shows a narrow path, 
With here and there a traveler. 

Then it might read: 

Hard is the road that leads to death, 
With here and there a traveler; 

But Goodness hath a broader path, 
And thousands walk together there. 

And why should we not desire a high 
grade of goodness? No man desires to 
buy or to raise apples which are called 
" culls," nor wheat that is number three. 
Why should we be satisfied to be ourselves 



Essential Requirements 15 

" culls," or number three, or " imperfect " 
men and women? To have true goodness is 
to meet the expectations of our best friends. 
It is to have the comfort of self-approval. 
It must also have the approval of Him 
whose we are. The desire for goodness is 
abundant. But by some kind of influence, 
which it may not be worth while to trace 
now, many men and women have come to 
a half-settled conviction that goodness is 
something we obtain rather than produce. 
Some quaint fellow said that the way to be 
an orator is to be filled with the subject, 
and then " let nature caper." Something 
like this is the instruction which says " to 
be truly good is to be filled with the Holy 
Spirit, and then be led by it." In both 
these sayings there is a truth, but in both of 
them there is a great shortage of truth. 
The orator must indeed know his subject, 
and be rilled with it. But he must have much 
more than that. He must know language 
well enough to tell what he knows. He 
must know the audience well enough to 
supply what they lack. He must have a 
voice which has such vital connection with 
his feelings that when his heart exults 
his voice will be thrilled with his exultation, 



1 6 Tillage of the Heart 

and when his heart weeps his voice will 
tremble. In addition to these he must have 
that indefinable something which men call 
" personality " ; then he may " let nature 
caper." And so the Christian man or 
woman needs to know and to have sev- 
eral things. When these are in posses- 
sion, then, and not till then, he may trust 
to the leading of the Spirit to make good- 
ness abound. The Spirit must, indeed, lead 
us ; but it must lead in his way, not in our 
way. And his way is to lead through the 
agency and partnership of all the powers 
and faculties which God has given to us. 
For this reason the increase in goodness 
which we desire calls for a study of its con- 
ditions, and what we may not improperly 
call its " laws." It is to these that I am 
permitted for a few Sunday mornings to 
ask your attention. 

This morning I wish to consider three 
requisites for the " Tillage of the Heart " or 
the cultivation of goodness. 

The -first requisite is the right attitude 
toward goodness. The home of moral good- 
ness is in the intentions. 1 If a little 
child were building block houses, and you 

1 Aristotle, " Ethics," Book III, Chap. IV, V. 



Essential Requirements 17 

should, in passing, knock one down, the 
first thing the child would do would be to 
look up and find out whether you did it 
intentionally or not. If you did, you would 
lose its respect. If the child saw that you 
did not mean to do it, he might have grief, 
but not anger. He estimates the quality of 
your act by your attitude of heart in the 
matter. This is a fundamental idea in 
our estimates of conduct. As the Proverb 
says, " Out of the heart are the issues of 
life." 2 John said " Whosoever hateth his 
brother is a murderer.'' 3 Even though he 
does not kill, yet he is deterred from it by 
fear, not by respect for his brother. He 
needs only time and dangerless opportunity 
to coin his thoughts into deeds. When 
Xaaman had been cured by Jehovah's 
prophet, he said to Elisha that he would not 
himself worship any God but Jehovah. But 
his duties to his king made it necessary for 
him to go with the king into the temple of 
Rimmon, and to bow down with him. He 
asked if he might do this? And the 
prophet said, " Go in peace." 4 The heart of 
the man was his moral measure. Paul said 

2 Prov. 4 : 23. 3 1 John 3 : 15. 

4 2 Kings 5 : 15-19. 
B 



1 8 Tillage of the Heart 

of the times when he was hunting Chris- 
tians like wild beasts that he obtained for- 
giveness " because he did it ignorantly in 
unbelief/' and that he " verily thought he 
ought " to do it. 5 His attitude toward good- 
ness was correct. And that attitude, while 
it did not excuse his acts, gave him the op- 
portunity to obtain forgiveness. There can 
be no goodness without the hunger for it. 
Accidental goodness is not goodness. One 
must say in his heart of hearts, " O Lord, I 
want to be a good man. I would like to be 
rich, or learned, or great, but I want most 
of all to be a good man." Peter wrote: 
" Give diligence to make your calling and 
election sure." That word " diligence " is 
not much used among us now. One seldom 
sees it in the newspapers. But it was a 
great word in the days when the New 
Testament was translated. " Seest thou a 
man diligent in business? That man shall 
stand before kings." " Thou hast com- 
manded us thy precepts that we should ob- 
serve them diligently." " Give diligence that 
ye may be found in peace without spot and 
blameless." 6 If we hope to be good, we 

5 Acts 26 : 9; Gal. 1 : 13; 1 Tim, 1 : 13. 
6 Prov. 22 : 29; Ps. 119 : 4; 2 Peter 3 : 14. 



Essential Requirements 19 

must see to it that our hearts are set upon 
it. It must be not merely an incident in our 
career that we are good, but it must be the 
main current of our desires. 

It is a great comfort to find the Scrip- 
tures dealing so hopefully with those who 
really mean well, though they do ill. 
Jephthah made a foolish vow when he 
said he would sacrifice the first thing that 
came out to meet him on his return. And 
then, to his horror, his beloved daughter, 
not knowing his vow, came out; and, for 
the vow's sake, was sacrificed. But how ten- 
derly do the Scriptures deal with the case ! 
Jephthah's vow is recorded with sorrow, as 
is the sorrow of all Israel, as they bewailed 
the virginity of the sweet girl. But Jephthah 
is not cursed. His intention saved him that 
penalty. 7 

So too, Abraham, because he meant to do 
right, and was preparing for the sacrifice of 
his son because he thought it was right, was 
spared the sorrow, but was honored for his 
faith. 

So is it now. Many are esteemed because 
of their intention to do good who err in their 
way of doing it. In the long run, intention 

7 Judg. 11; Dawson's "Reproach of Christ," p. 152. 



20 Tillage of the Heart 

will not fail to be recognized. God, who 
knoweth the heart, will measure us there. 

But let us not make the mistake of think- 
ing that intention is the whole substance of 
goodness. A man, to be wholly good, must 
be good for something. This intention must 
be applied to life in its daily activities. One 
must know when he is doing the right thing. 
This brings us to consider the second re- 
quirement. 

The second requisite is a correct ideal 
of life. In the study of ethics we come 
upon two lines of thinking. One way of 
looking at life says that men do as rivers 
do. They take the line of least resistance. 
If a lake on some high mountain should be 
drained off through a deep cut, the water 
would run here and there, following no 
prearranged course, and yet, in a way, 
necessitated to run, as it does run, by the 
obstacles it meets. If the land is level and 
the obstructions high, the river will be deep 
and the current sluggish. If the land is 
hilly, and the way open, the river will be 
swift and shallow. There is no purpose on 
the part of any one to guide it, but the 
combination of water behind with ob- 
stacles in front, determines the course of 



Essential Requirements 21 

the stream. So, some men say, our life is 
lived — not by any predetermined plan or 
purpose, but evolves according to circum- 
stances without plan, and yet by a kind of 
necessity. 

There is no moral goodness in such a life. 
Under that view, what we call " moral " 
would not exist. A machine can have no 
moral virtues. 

Probably none of us is willing to accept 
that necessitarian idea of life, for it re- 
duces us to mere corks on the water, hav- 
ing no true independence or personality ; to 
" things " — very refined and highly organ- 
ized " things " — tossed to and fro by every 
wind. 

The other view of life is based upon the 
fact that we are creatures who choose. 
That, whether we understand it all or not, 
we do actually determine our course to a 
large extent, and we determine our good- 
ness almost wholly. (It is, of course, under- 
stood that the partnership of God is not 
ignored.) We may be good or not, as we 
for ourselves decide. We are not now 
concerned much with the theory of good- 
ness. We face a condition, not a theory. 
What seems sure to us is that we do deter- 



22 Tillage of the Heart 

mine our course. We are now what we are 
because we chos-e what we did last year. 
And we shall be next year what we shall 
be because we choose what we do choose 
this year. Now, that which determines our 
choices this year is what men call our ideal. 
That is, the kind of men, or the kind of 
women we really desire to be is the control- 
ling power in our choices. " Morality may 
be said to be an attempt to realize certain 
types of men. Each one of us endeavors to 
be a particular kind of man. To be moral is 
to live, if not up to, yet toward that ideal. " 8 
Suppose that we, having a most earnest 
desire to do the right, had, as the idea of 
right, only what the blindest heathen has. 
It is perfectly evident that the whole fabric 
of life would be different from what it is. 
The woman of the Ganges, in her desire to 
do right, throws her infant to the river ; the 
woman of America gives her own life for 
her's. The Indian, desiring to please his 
God, scalps his enemy. The Christian, in 
the same desire, forgives his enemy. The 
old-fashioned Calvinist says, with Doctor 
Ryland, " When God wants to save the 
heathen, he will do it without your help or 

8 " The Religion of All Good Men," Garrod, p. 8. 



Essential Requirements 23 

mine." The present-day Christian says, " I 
doubt whether I can be saved myself if I do 
not try to save others. " One kind of honest 
politician says, " I must be in line with my 
party — for party government is necessary, 
on the whole, for the best efficiency." The 
other says, " Party or no party, I must fol- 
low my own judgment as to what is best 
in any particular case." So we see that a 
desire to be good may lead to wrong unless 
one has an ideal that is good. And the 
ideal in a long run determines a man's 
course. As the ship, though it sails on a 
tack seemingly away from its destination, 
yet in the balance of its departures and its 
returns tends toward its haven, so a man in 
his actions moves, on the whole, toward 
the man he really wants to be. If a man 
means to be a good man, but has never 
been made to think or feel that goodness 
includes some care and help for the outcast 
and the down-trodden ; some interest in the 
sociological movements that look toward the 
cleansing of the slums ; some interest in the 
general laws of the country ; some more in- 
terest in the republic of nations ; if, I say, a 
man has not seen these things as a part of 
the man he wants to be, his total goodness is 



24 Tillage of the Heart 

far less than if he had seen them, and 
sought to attain them. He falls short be- 
cause his ideal was small. 

There is a difference in the influence 
and value of goodness, as well as in the 
quality. The quality of Mr. Spurgeon's 
goodness as a preacher was not better than 
the quality of his coachman's, perhaps. But 
there was a difference in the value to others. 
A large ideal makes a large man. The old- 
fashioned Doctor Maclure, of whom Doctor 
Watson wrote in " The Bonny Briar Bush," 
cannot be excelled in the quality of his 
goodness as a physician. But the surgeon 
who came to help him, and saved a life 
which, but for him, Maclure must have 
seen go out, was far greater in the value of 
goodness. The old-fashioned doctors, who 
used to bleed the people to cure tuberculosis, 
meant as well as any could. But their ideal 
of a doctor was far less valuable than the 
man who now finds a cure for the white 
plague in the proper sanitation and nourish- 
ment of the sick. There is a goodness which 
is like the well, deep and perennial for one 
family; and another which is like the lake 
whose waters are the hope of a country. 

To be usefully good, one must have a 



Essential Requirements 25 

large ideal. Xo man can be thus who docs 
not have a large and a refined and quite 
complete notion of what goodness is, and 
how to attain it. He must understand 
something about the powers that are latent 
in himself ; and he must see the possibilities 
that are latent in others. He must have a 
sort of a vision of what the New Jerusalem 
is to be, and by what sort of tackling it is 
to be let down out of heaven to earth. If 
you tell your son that you want him to be 
like Mr. Lincoln, and all that he ever heard 
about Mr. Lincoln is his rail splitting, and 
story telling, and flatboat experiences, how 
little result would come to your son com- 
pared with what might come if he knew the 
story of Mr. Lincoln as the superb-hearted 
president, who understood men ; who knew 
no malice; who had unlimited patience and 
unfailing faith in God ; the man whom his 
opponents honored, and whose one-time 
enemies are now ashamed to own their en- 
mity ; whom all men love to honor. 

It is possible to have Christ as our ideal, 
and yet have too small an idea of him. 
Paul said, 9 " I have known Christ after the 
flesh, but now I know him so no more." He 

9 2 Cor. 5 : 16. 



26 Tillage of the Heart 

wrote to the Corinthians, " We, beholding 
as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are 
changed into the same image." 10 But if, 
when we look into that mirror, we see no 
glory, we get no glorious change. To get 
the uplift, we must have the uplook. So, 
we say again, to have great goodness, we 
must have a good attitude, plus a good ideal. 
There must be power to accomplish. 
There may be a good attitude, and a 
splendid ideal, while the actual attainment 
of goodness is small. There are in every 
community those who illustrate this fact. 
We may say of ourselves, " We have hearts 
quite well in sympathy with goodness. We 
have high ideas of what manner of men we 
ought to be. We have more ideals than we 
know what to do with. The truth is, we are 
made uncomfortable by the fact that our 
ideals are so much higher than our attain- 
ments." Like Paul, we say, " The good' 
that I would do I do not, and the evil 
that I would not that I do." 11 With all 
our riches of ideal we may be paupers in 
righteousness. Our case may be the case 
of a splendid engine, on a good track, with 
a fair grade, but with coal so poor that it 

10 2 Cor. 3:18. u Rom. 7. 



Essential Requirements 27 

won't make steam. We approve the good, 
but we fail to do it. We approve things 
excellent, and often do things execrable. At 
times we rise up and begin to do better, and 
in a little while we are out of breath and 
give it up. Much of the time we cry in our 
souls : 

Oh, for more of His power within me. 
Oh, for greater love ! 

What I am saying is to emphasize this 
need of power to accomplish what we truly 
desire. It is the common experience of 
mankind that we are in need of some mighty 
impulse which will be able to awaken our 
moral forces into full action, and to sus- 
tain them with great patience. We have 
had occasional samples of such impulse — 
enough to make us know its power. We 
want the source of it. We need to search 
for that as for hid treasure. We must find 
what will awaken enthusiasm, enkindle 
hope, supply courage. We may " squeeze 
through," as Job said, " by the skin of our 
teeth" 12 without this. But it will be a 
" hand to mouth " existence, with no riches 
of goodness, and no " abundant entrance." 

12 Job 19 : 20. 



28 Tillage of the Heart 

Better things are worth trying for. We 
subordinate great things to win corruptible 
crowns. It will be worth while to make a 
strenuous endeavor to, in a certain real 
sense, systematize our efforts to be truly 
good for the sake of an incorruptible char- 
acter. 

Those who were able to attend the Mara- 
thon races in London, in the year 1908, 
will recall the wondrous scene when the 
race was finished. The runners were pant- 
ing from the strenuous work. The friends 
were gathered around them congratulating 
them on their victory. National pride 
thrilled the heart of every Englishman and 
every American, for the merits of the two 
were so evenly matched that it was not easy 
to determine the winner. At length, on a 
high platform, which stood in the focus of 
vision for fifty thousand people, surround- 
ed with royalty, came King Edward VII 
and his Queen. Then the herald, with a 
speaking-trumpet to his mouth, called aloud 
the name of the victor, and bade him come 
up to the platform. And he, amid the 
deafening applause of the multitude, went 
up and received from the Queen the prize 
for his victory. 



Essential Requirements 29 

It had cost long months of training, the 
most careful self-control of appetite and 
pleasure, long hours of determined, strenu- 
ous running. But it was worth while. 

Paul seems to have had some such scene 
in mind when he wrote, " I press toward the 
goal for the prize of the ' upcalling ' of God 
in Christ Jesus," and " there is laid up 
for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at 
that day." It is w T orth while to try. And 
we have this to encourage us. In that race, 
as in the Greek races, many ran, but only 
one obtained the prize ; but we may all, if 
we run with patience, obtain Christian char- 
acter and the " upcalling of God " in Christ 
Jesus. And the three great fundamental 
necessities for it are an attitude of desire, a 
large ideal, and communication with the 
source of moral power. 



II 

EXAMINATION OF THE FIELD 

"But let a man examine himself." — i Cor. 
ii : 28. 

IF a man were to begin the reclamation of 
a farm, or its substantial improvement, 
his first step would be to make a mental 
survey of its condition. He would note the 
various kinds of soil, the noxious weeds it 
produces, the marshes to be drained, the 
stones to be removed. And then he would 
plan his work to meet the exigencies. In 
the tillage of the heart, it will be neces- 
sary at the first to give a thoughtful atten- 
tion to the faults of life. 

I should regret exceedingly if what I am 
about to say should be understood as favor- 
ing a morbid self-inspection. It is not such 
an examination that I counsel. But it is a 
well-recognized fact that we often see what 
we think are faults in ourselves, and over- 
look the greatest ones. It is easy to be de- 
ceived about ourselves. We must, there- 
30 



Examination of the Field 31 

fore, " gird up the loins of our minds " in 
this matter that we may not overlook our 
real weaknesses. We may not safely be 
content to ask what the creeds say about 
us. They tell us that " all men are by 
nature utterly void of that holiness re- 
quired by the law of God; positively in- 
clined to evil, and therefore under just con- 
demnation without defense or excuse. 1 It 
is an easy thing to give assent to that state- 
ment. But mere assent counts for nothing. 
It may be a sort of opium plaster to ease the 
pain of conscience, while the sore on our 
souls rots away our moral life. This kind of 
assent is a most dangerous substitute for the 
real sense of our badness which must pre- 
cede any radical improvement. 

Neither may we be content simply to ac- 
cept the statements of the Scriptures on this 
matter. We know they say that, " All our 
righteousnesses are as filthy rags " ; 2 and 
" There is none righteous, no not one " ; 3 
and " We are all children of wrath, even as 
others. " 4 We are liable to think that be- 
cause we believe the Bible, and assent to 
these condemnatory things which it says 

1 " N. H. Conf.," Article III. 2 Isa. 64 : 6. 

3 Rom. 3 : 10. * Eph. 2 : 3. 



32 Tillage of the Heart 

about us, we are in a fit frame of mind to 
accept the grace of God. But I take it that 
mere assent to such sayings, simply because 
they are in the Bible, is not worth a rush 
toward helping us to overcome our faults. 
It is a very different thing from feeling our 
sin, and crying out as the psalmist did, 
" My sin is ever before me." No ! not this 
formal assent to anybody's opinion about 
us, but some intelligent view of our own 
case in the light of careful examination is 
needed. We know how in sickness the old- 
fashioned doctor used to feel the pulse, look 
at the tongue, and give a dose of calomel. 
But now the skilled physician seeks first 
a thorough diagnosis of the case. He 
studies the action of the heart and lungs; 
takes the temperature; inquires about the 
digestion; obtains cultures from the secre- 
tion of the throat to see if diphtheria is 
present; examines the sputum for tubercu- 
lar, the blood for malarial, germs. Then he 
feels prepared to prescribe. 

The same is true in business. Men who 
would improve their business find out where 
the leaks are. They inquire, " Does the 
clerical force cost too much ? " " Are any 
of them dishonest? " " Is there any energy 



Examination of the Field 33 

displayed among them ? " " Can the inci- 
dental expenses be reduced?" " Is there 
enough in the business to make it pay under 
any management ? " 

And in political matters the same is true. 
We all are familiar with Daniel Webster's 
grandiloquent opening words in reply to Mr. 
Hayne's speech on slavery : " When the 
mariner has been tossed for many days in 
thick weather on an unknown sea, he natu- 
rally avails himself of the first pause in the 
storm to take his latitude, and ascertain how 
far the elements have driven him from his 
true course. " 5 

We remember also Mr. Lincoln's less 
wordy, but equally wise statement, " If we 
knew where we are and whither we are 
tending, we should know better what to do 
and how to do it." 

So is it in this matter of our own life; 
we must thoroughly know our condition. 
It is said of our great missionary, Doctor 
Judson, that at one time he found himself 
fearing that his contact with sin in India 
had blunted the sense of his sinfulness. He 
prayed to God that he might have a clearer 
view of his own condition. And his prayer 

5 " Great Speeches," p. 226. 
C 



34 Tillage of the Heart 

was answered. Somehow the windows of 
his soul were thrown open to the light, and 
he saw the accumulated dust of years, the 
mildew on the walls, the spider sins up near 
the ceiling, the bugs that had their nests in 
the corners. He smelled the must of old 
theology, and snuffed the miasma of decay- 
ing sympathies until he cried out, " O God, 
it is enough! Create in me a clean heart; 
renew a right spirit within me." After 
that he could sing with great fervor : 

Oh, to grace how great a debtor 
Daily I'm constrained to be. 

And Paul went through a similar experi- 
ence. He says, " I was alive once without 
the law. But the law came, sin revived, 
and I died." 6 That is, the time was when, 
though he knew the law by head, he did 
not know it in heart. He assented to 
its sayings, but the fact of his own sinful- 
ness was not impressed on him. He saw 
his own badnesses very dimly, and therefore 
did not make any strong effort to overcome 
them. He was orthodox. He was honored 
in his church. He was zealous — so much so 
that he could persecute those whom he 

6 Rom. 7 : 9. 



Examination of the Field 35 

thought were not orthodox. But one day he 
saw himself as God saw him. Then he cried 
out, " O wretched man that I am." 

It is this sense of our own sinfulness 
which we must try to obtain. Not a sense 
of sins which we do not have; nor a sense 
of sins which others think we have, but a 
sense, true and just, of what concrete sins 
we do have, and what specific deficiencies 
in our Christian life remain to be remedied. 

But while all this is, I doubt not, vaguely 
understood by us, I think we feel — I know 
I did for a long time — dependent wholly 
upon some superhuman agency which 
should reveal our condition to us. We have 
said, " The Holy Spirit must convict of sin/' 
And we have not so generally recognized it 
as a part of our own proper duty to try to 
discover for ourselves the true state of our 
case. We have sometimes had a foolish no- 
tion that as pests on trees live out their days 
and depart of their own motion and will, 
so our faults will probably go away — " burn 
themselves out with their own flame " — 
without our special attention to them ; dis- • 
appear with our advancing years of experi-' 
ence. Dr. Henry G. Weston had a great 
rose garden. On being asked for some in- 



36 Tillage of the Heart 

formation about rose culture, he replied: 
" I know nothing about it. All I do is to 
keep the soil rich, and hope thus to grow the 
roses faster than the lice or pests can eat 
them up." That answers fairly well part 
of the time. But one year some sort of 
malady attacked them which withered the 
buds by the hundreds, and made them turn 
black in a night. Special treatment was 
needed then. And that could only come by 
knowledge of the disease. Many people tell 
us that the only requirement for growing 
into goodness is to keep in good company; 
keep active in Christian duty, and the rest 
will follow naturally. There is a great 
amount of truth in that. But it is far from 
all the necessary truth. What shall we say 
of an active, soul-stirring, world-known 
evangelist who does not pay his debts? 
Could not he discover that fault by a little 
self-examination? And would it not be at 
least better for his creditors if he should try 
and be rid of that fault before he is an old 
man ? " He that hath arrived at the stature 
of Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime 
and longest intention of his being, and can- 
not be called young/' 7 He could get the 

1 " Letter to a Friend," Sir Thos. Browne, p. 146. 



Examination of the Field 37 

virtue of age in his youth, and thus gain 
time. Or, how about a Christian busi- 
ness man who, in his desire to make a suc- 
cess, grinds the faces of his helpers in the 
business? Or a social leader in the church 
who is hard on her housemaids? Or the 
carpenter who is faithfully at church, and is 
not faithful in his carpenter work? Are not 
these faults discoverable by self-exami- 
nation, and remediable by self-culture? 

A preacher, whose name is well known, 
found himself deficient in the use of illustra- 
tion. He was an abstract sort of a thinker; 
reasoned all the time as if he were talking to 
a class in mathematics ; fed the reasoning 
powers, but starved the affections of his peo- 
ple. But when he found in what he was de- 
ficient he began to cultivate his imagination 
and illustrating power. Now he is a most 
remarkable man in his power of illustration. 
Doctor Watkinson tells of a man who was 
excessively timid at the thought of death. 
He forced himself to sleep in the presence 
of a skeleton, until he overcame it. Shall 
we, then, think that the consciousness of our 
own faults must wait until some other than 
ourselves makes them known to us? The 
old Greeks said, " Know thyself." The 



38 Tillage of the Heart 

modern man, while he has help which the 
Greek did not have, may not neglect the 
precept of the old philosophy. 

When we come to the self-examination, 
there are three things into which we need 
to look. 

The first is our motives. We said, 
in a former address, the first place to 
estimate the moral quality of an act is in 
the motive, or intention of it. No matter 
how good an act may be in itself, it fails 
to bring us comfort if the motive is not 
right. So far as the world about us is con- 
cerned, the motive may not affect the influ- 
ence of an act. Bread given to the hungry 
will feed them as well if it is given from 
love of praise as if in a spirit of love. But 
the man most concerned in an act is the 
actor. And with him the motive is im- 
portant. The real heart of an act is found 
in the answer to the question, " Why did I 
do it?" It sometimes occurs that men 
praise an act of ours as an act of gener- 
osity, when we know it was done out of 
pure diplomacy, to gain some other end than 
the one they see. How empty their praise 
seems to us ! We know that the act of 
which they speak, and as they see it, was 



Examination of the Field 39 

in reality not performed at all. They were 
deceived. At other times we are accused of 
wrong actions, which were done with great 
self-sacrifice and the best motives. These 
accusations grieve us at their injustice, but 
how light are the self-inflictions of re- 
proach at such mis-judgments! Put such 
acts in the crucible of the truth and they 
stand all tests. Perhaps the record of our 
goodness will shrink very much when 
brought to this test, for our motives are 
mixed with dross. But it is worth while — 
not too frequently — to put some of our 
record into the assay office of our best judg- 
ment and see what proportion of it melts 
away under the fire, and how much will bear 
the test. Some woman, writing of the New 
England people, said that they could not re- 
ceive a kindly, self-sacrificing service from 
others without asking, " I wonder why they 
did it." This is slander on New England, 
but it reveals a certain tendency to mistrust 
motives ; and such suspicion is born in one's 
own consciousness of mixed motive, for to 
accuse any one of a wrong shows such a 
wrong to be possible in the accuser. It is 
uncomfortable to go on under false colors. 
Quaint old Thomas Browne said, " He who 



40 Tillage of the Heart 

acts a part is, as it were, out of himself; 
which, if long, proves so irksome that men 
are glad to pull off their vizards and resume 
themselves again." 8 

Again, it is well to examine our habits. 
We are creatures of habit. And it is good 
to be such. Virtue is not full grown in any 
until it is habitual, and kept for the love 
of it. But there is a habit of action, and 
another of feeling. Prof. St. John, of 
Hartford School of Pedagogy, said in a 
lecture at Northfield, on the training of the 
young in missions, that " it is not best to 
try and form in very young children the 
habit of giving money, for they do not 
know the value of money, nor do they 
experience any self-denial in the giving. 
Better train them in the habit of feeling in- 
terest in others who have less knowledge of 
God than they, and then, when the knowl- 
edge of money and the power to earn it 
come, the habitual interest in others will be 
the spring of true benevolence and large 
gifts of money." It is well to examine life 
and see whether our contributions of money, 
our attendance at church, our courtesy to 
others, our response to causes of need, are 

8 " Christian Morals," p. 220. 



Examination of the Field 41 

mere habits of action without a real habit of 
sympathy. Do we give money because it is 
the least trouble to help in that way? Are 
we reading the Bible and saying our prayers 
from habit, or from the love of it ? I do not 
say that habit of action is not good, for it 
is. But I say that the best — and we want 
the best — is habit of affection. That will 
bring the best results. John Ruskin wrote : 
" If people do right, in time they come 
to like doing it. But they are only in 
a right moral stage when they have come to 
like doing it ; and as long as they don't like 
it, they are still in a vicious state. The 
entire object of true education is to make 
people not only do right, but enjoy doing 
right things ; not merely industrious, but to 
love industry — not merely learned, but to 
love knowledge — not merely pure, but to 
love purity — not merely just, but to hunger 
and thirst after justice. " 

" I am prepared," says one writer, " to 
maintain that so long as we are conscious 
of performing a good action from a sense of 
duty only, we are immoral. . . So long as 
we only do our duty we are ' unprofitable 
servants.' I will even go farther. I will 
maintain that there have been more crimes 



42 Tillage of the Heart 

done in this world in the name of duty than 
good deeds." 9 

We may ask, " Am I drifting easily in a 
current of good habit and early training, or 
making a brave self-directed business of 
righteousness ? " " Am I living a respec- 
table life because my lot is cast where there 
is no great battle, or am I, having on the 
whole armor of God, standing against all 
the wiles of the wicked one, strong in the 
strength which God supplies ? " I do not 
say we should covet the fight, but I say that 
a truthful estimate of our own situation, in 
the light of these questions, is necessary for 
a just estimate of our own worth, and our 
estimate of the worth of others. 

And, again, we may profitably examine 
our knowledge of right. Many a man has 
good motives, and good habits, as far as 
he knows, but he is in error about what is 
right. For example: Is it the Christian's 
right to obey or to disobey a law of the 
land when he thinks the law is not just? 
A clerk in a store — is it his duty to refuse 
to sell goods for what he knows they are 
not? A stenographer is directed to write a 

9 H. W. Garrod, in " The Religion of All Good Men," 
P- 32. 



Examination of the Field 43 

letter, the contents of which she knows are 
false — is she justified in doing so, or should 
she refuse? A politician is expected by his 
party to stand by a certain measure for the 
party's sake. He does not himself like the 
measure. What is his proper course? It 
may be that men have come to erroneous 
decisions about such matters. It is for them 
to revise their knowledge of moral duties. 
There was a time when the best Christians 
did not think it a duty to send missionaries. 
They were wrong in their judgment. There 
was a time when the deacons and ministers 
did not think it wrong to use alcoholic 
drinks, even in church gatherings. They 
have learned better. Once good men in 
America thought slavery was right, and 
thought they found its justification in the 
Scriptures. Now the men are very scarce 
who would not condemn it as in whole and 
in every part unchristian. 

It has lately been said (or written) that 
the teachers of ethics in our schools are 
trying to blast away the Rock of Ages. I 
think any man who reads the article must 
see that it is either a new ebullition of Tar- 
bellianism, or an example of gross ignorance 
of the facts. The teaching of ethics in the 



44 Tillage of the Heart 

colleges is not disturbing the Rock of Ages, 
but surveying its proportions, and finding 
the eternal bases on which it rests. But as 
these bases are laid bare, it is being found 
that moral principles which have Christian 
confirmation are susceptible of much wider 
and more thorough application than we have 
been giving them. We are living in times 
when some of the common judgments of 
life are being reversed, but upon good moral 
authority. It becomes us all to look into 
our moral ideas and see if we are reasoning 
from some false premise, and, like Paul, 
" verily thinking we ought " to do certain 
things which we ought not to do. If we, 
as a people, are to rise to nobler things, we 
must rise to higher ideas of our duty. Are 
our common conceptions of duty as high as 
they can be? If they are not, then we 
ought to make them higher. Are there any 
duties contained in the spirit of the Master's 
teaching which we have not seen to be our 
duties ? Then we ought to search for them 
as for hid treasure. It is certainly the busi- 
ness of Christian men to christianize the civil 
life of the land. And that requires more 
than submission to somebody's dictum. It 
means examination of one's own duty. 



Examination of the Field 45 

These three fields of inquiry — our motives, 
our habits, and our knowledge of moral re- 
quirements, will cover pretty well the 
ground of a good self-inspection. 

Now, a word about the search itself. 
How shall it be made, and with what helps ? 

First it must be an honest search. I 
mean we must be honest with ourselves, 
for no others are to know what we find. If 
we find real faults, we may not gloss them 
over, but admit to ourselves the facts. If a 
man finds that he is accustomed to misstate 
facts, let him not say to himself, " Well, I 
did stretch that a little/' or " That was part- 
ly a play of the imagination/' but let him 
say, " That was a false statement, and 
I knew it was false when I made it; and a 
false statement is a lie ; and the man who 
makes such habitually is a liar ; and when I 
look in the glass I look at a liar." Brand 
the brow of your own consciousness as with 
a hot iron " Liar/' Brought up in a Chris- 
tian land, with an open Bible, with a knowl- 
edge of Christ's true life, and still a liar! 

If a man finds that he is accustomed to 
crowd others that he may get the best for 
himself; that he always takes, but seldom 
gives; hunts the best seat in church, or 



46 Tillage of the Heart 

streetcars or steamcars; if he bribes the 
waiter at the hotel with a big tip to wait on 
him out of his turn ; if he " crowds in " at 
the ticket-office instead of getting in line 
like a man ; if, I say, he finds himself doing 
that, let him not say, " Well, one must look 
out for himself in this wicked world. I 
know it is not nice, but I must do it." 
Rather let him remember that he does not 
like that conduct in others, and others do 
not like it in him. Let him say, " This is 
piggish, and it will grow to be hoggish, and 
by and by I shall be justly called a human 
hog." 

If a man finds himself saying, " Well, I 
do not know about this matter of Jesus. 
Let that get settled elsewhere " ; that is un- 
belief in Jesus; and the unbeliever has no 
part with Jesus; and that means that the 
hope, and the help, which Jesus gives is not 
his. Christ's care, his promises, his hope, 
his heaven, his likeness at the last — all 
these he drops out of his hand when he 
drops Christ from his faith. Do not call it 
" honest doubt. " Doubt whom? What would 
you say if your wife should say, " John, 
I have doubts about your loyalty to me " ? 
Honest doubt! What would your banker 



Examination of the Field 47 

say if you told him you have an " honest 
doubt" of his financial integrity? What 
would your friend say if you told him that 
you honestly doubted his friendship? The 
more you protest the honesty of your doubt, 
the more damning your doubt becomes. 
You may have inquiries about Jesus. You 
will have great and honest, and in some 
things inevitable, ignorance of him, but do 
not attempt to sugar-coat your unbelief with 
the name " honest doubt." Call it unbelief, 
if it is unbelief, and face the consequences. 

You may find yourself worrying about 
little things : do not call it nervousness, 
call it little faith. You may be without 
glorious anticipations : do not call it lack 
of imagination, call it hopelessness. Call 
your critical disposition uncharitableness. 
Call harsh criticisms of all things cynicism, 
and that, if literally translated, is doggish- 
ness, for " cynic " is the Greek word for 
dog. Call your hesitation to ask God for 
help, prayerlessness. When you have an 
audience with yourself, tell yourself the 
facts. Mr. James B. Colgate once said to 
me, " I pity the sons of kings, for no one 
dares tell them their faults to their faces." 
Tell yourself your faults once in a while to 



48 Tillage of the Heart 

your face with courage. Get a true diag- 
nosis of your case and name it in English — 
not Latin. In New England, near Canada, 
there used to be what the doctors called, 
when wealthy people had it, a " troublesome 
eczema," but when common folk had it, it 
was plain " Canada-itch!' Call not your 
covetousness an " eczema," but the old-fash- 
ioned " money-itch." Name your ebullition 
of unkind words quick-temper; and your 
pious economy in missions what the proph- 
et called it, stealing from God. When you 
have had such an interview with yourself, 
you will feel as if your soul was coming 
from the Osteopaths. You will be sore in 
heart. But it will bring forth good. 

Again, search with the candle of the 
Scriptures. They are the highest standard 
for goodness we have. No men have writ- 
ten more pointedly and profitably than the 
writers of the Book of books. The gold- 
smith takes our jewelry and puts a drop or 
two of acid on it and lets it stay awhile. If 
the metal is not good, there will come little 
bubbles of gas, and changes in color; then 
the surface gets roughened because the 
acid has found the metal that is not gold. 
The Scriptures, if you apply them to your 



Examination of the Field 49 

life and hold them there, will soon reveal to 
you what you have not seen of alloy in your 
conduct. For example : " Be not fashioned 
according, to this age." That is, do not 
regulate your conduct by the principles 
which those follow who are not calculating 
on another life after this one. " Avenge not 
yourselves." " Let no corrupt speech pro- 
ceed out of your mouth." " Let all bitter- 
ness and wrath, and clamor and evil speak- 
ing be put away from you." " Put away all 
wickedness and guile and hypocrisies and 
envies and evil speakings." " Abstain from 
fleshly lusts which war against the soul." 
These, and similar passages, held up by the 
side of our lives, will soon make known to 
us in what particulars we are deficient. 

This sort of examination is not pleasant 
to make. It is not at all well to make such 
too often, and thus to become morbid, or 
discouraged about ourselves. But we are to 
make the examination simply as preliminary 
and for the sake of improving ourselves. 
Let one take some hours for this exami- 
nation, as if he were about to move into 
himself to live; and before he moves in he 
wishes to repair his dwelling because it is 
unsanitary. Let him go through it, upstairs 



5<d Tillage of the Heart 

and down, to see what needs to be done. 
Are there any old decaying grudges left 
over from last year's social life which must 
be taken from the cellar of memory? Do 
all bitterness and jealousy and unkind 
thought get carried off daily in the great 
drain of forgiveness ? Is there any shadowy 
upas tree of envy which makes it hard to 
be cheerful and glad at others' prosperity? 
Are the living and sleeping rooms of the 
heart, where he will stay most of the time, 
open toward the sunny side of things so 
that he gets a little sun of cheerfulness part 
of every day? Such examination will not 
be oppressive, but (when we remember that 
Jesus' special business with mankind is to 
" save them from their sins," and that he is 
"able to save to the uttermost"), will be 
an effective and profitable exercise in the 
cultivation of goodness. 

And in all this pray with the psalmist: 
" Search me, O God, and know my heart ; 
try me and know my thoughts, and see if 
there be any wicked way in me, and lead me 
in the Way Everlasting." 



Ill 

nature's assistance 

"So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should 
cast seed upon the earth: and should sleep and 
rise night and day, and the seed should spring 
up and grow, he knoweth not how. The earth 
beareth fruit of herself ."—Mark 4 : 26-28. 

I UNDERSTAND this word of the Sav- 
iour to teach us that in the very nature 
of things there is an arrangement which 
makes for righteousness all the time, as the 
forces of the earth lie in wait for the seed 
to make it fruitful. All the year sun, air, 
and land seem to watch for the hand of 
man " as the eyes of a maid are unto the 
hand of her mistress/' and when he sows 
the seed, at once without any delay, these 
forces are at work to bring forth the 
harvest. 

I take it that there is thus an inherent 
and latent power in men, predisposed to the 
production of goodness. It is wrought into 
the nature of things ; and when we meet the 
conditions, this power works with us to will 

5i 



52 Tillage of the Heart 

and to do right. It is an important part of 
the theory of at least one school of medicine 
that nature is seeking to set ills right; the 
physician only reenforces nature. 

So is the kingdom of God among men, 
and in men ; it is the normal thing ; all else 
is abnormal. 

I spoke to you last Sunday on the ne- 
cessity to search with diligence and unflinch- 
ing fidelity into our own motives, and habits, 
and moral judgments, to discover what, if 
any, are the things which need to be reme- 
died. If some of you have tried to do that, 
I doubt not you have come to the same con- 
clusion that Benjamin Franklin once did. 
He had made twelve rules by which to guide 
his moral life. After a time he discovered 
that he was getting proud of his good- 
ness; so he added another rule, namely, 
that he would be a praying man, as that 
would break his pride and produce humility. 
After a time he said that he was surprised 
to find that he had so many faults which he 
had not before discovered. 

More faults than we thought we had! 
Less real goodness than we had given our- 
selves credit for! That as likely as not is 
the experience of all who have searched for 



Nature's Assistance 53 

the inside facts of their life. Those who 
have had such an experience are in condition 
to think upon the topic of this morning. 

There are two lines of procedure for us. 
One is to find general help, and the other is 
to find specific help for specific faults. It 
is to the first that I ask your attention here. 

If we may follow the analogy of medical 
science, instead of agriculture, we may say 
that many spiritual troubles are best treated 
constitutionally. They are the results, not 
of any specific evil intent, but of a " general 
spiritual debility," or of bad religious at- 
mosphere; and when these are corrected, 
the troubles go. 

Prefacing all endeavors with a prayerful 
spirit, we may say that the first assistance 
of nature is physical health. 

There has been among the English people 
a sort of undercurrent of suspicion that a 
robust man or woman is handicapped in 
the endeavor to be exceptionally religious. 
Misinterpreting Paul's writings, it has been 
thought that the "flesh" is the mortal 
enemy of the spirit ; and that to " mortify 
the flesh " is a necessity for the best 
life of the soul. The saints of the Eng- 
lish Catholic Church of the Middle Ages 



54 Tillage of the Heart 

were lean, cadaverous, pale-blooded people 
who ate little and slept less, but prayed very 
much. A saint was a man whom one would 
be glad to have as a companion when he was 
sick, but with whom he would not want to 
go to dinner when well. This conception 
of saintliness has filtered down through 
the English-speaking world, and even now 
some residuum of it remains, though it has 
been greatly modified of late years. The 
motto of the Y. M. C. A. expresses a 
hopeful drift of thought on the matter, " A 
sound mind, in a sound body." Respectable 
athletic activities are no longer thought of 
as in a subtle way antagonistic to spiritual 
life. Probably there is no need now to de- 
fend such athletics from the charge of being 
unchristian; but it still remains needful to 
remind ourselves that good robust health 
and buoyant physical spirits are not only 
not contrary to true goodness, but are to be 
cultivated as one means to goodness. It is 
not so easy to be sweet in spirit with a sour 
stomach as without one; hence the duty to 
sweeten the stomach. It requires more de- 
termination to be calm in mind when one 
has the jumping toothache than when one 
does not have it; hence the duty to attend 



Nature's Assistance 55 

to the teeth. Dyspepsia loads a man with 
great difficulty when he tries to be a hopeful 
and cheery Christian ; hence a wise Christian 
seeks to avoid dyspepsia. We will not say 
that the mind cannot rise above these fleshly 
ills, and maintain in spite of them the proper 
spirit; for our acquaintance furnishes cases 
where it seems as if ills made a background 
for displaying the glory of a Christian vic- 
tory. But it costs a greater effort to do 
this in poor than in good health; therefore 
the cultivation of good health becomes an 
important aid in the cultivation of good- 
ness. It is a poor outlook for true piety 
when overeating, or oversmoking, or under- 
sleeping, or inordinate excitement, or over- 
work are not only sapping the physical vi- 
tality, but somehow throwing sand into the 
delicate machinery of the soul and making it 
creak and grind and stop. So we all find 
that to improve health is to make good, 
wholesome Christian life easier. 

St. Augustine taught in his book of Chris- 
tian ethics that all virtue comes out of one 
principle, dividing into four main streams 
of influence. 1 That principle is love. And 
love applied to the physical part of us con- 

1 " Morals of Cath. Ch.," Chap. XV, XXV. 



56 Tillage of the Heart 

sists in such self-control of all our physical 
powers that they may all serve God. I 
think Paul had the same thing in mind when 
he wrote to the Romans, " I beseech you, 
therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye 
present your bodies " — not sick, nor half- 
dead, but living — " living sacrifices " — all 
the faculties full, buoyant, strong — " holy, 
acceptable to God, which is your rational 
' liturgy' l» 

Again, it is written, " Know ye not that 
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit; 
therefore glorify God in your body." 2 And 
I think it will be found that good health has 
always been the ready handmaid to good- 
ness. The improvement, therefore, of indi- 
vidual health, or the lifting of the general 
physical welfare of a community, is an im- 
portant aid to the coming of the kingdom of 
God among men; the physician takes his 
place among the spiritual forces of the 
world; the teacher of good hygiene is one 
of the missionaries of the Most High; and 
the care of the health is a part of Christian 
sanctification. 

The second assistance is the sense of our 
Lord's personal interest. I am speaking to 

2 i Cor. 6 : 19. 



Nature's Assistance 57 

Christians now, and therefore I have no 
need to defend the statements I am about to 
make. To some other people I might make 
a differently worded statement. But even 
Christians get into what we call a " far 
country." They do not always have the 
keen sense of being a people whose hope lies 
in Christ Jesus. And you know there is a 
great difference between accepting Christ's 
teachings and living in a sort of daily fel- 
lowship with him. His teachings about 
morality might be true, and he himself be as 
dead as Socrates. I think it is a tendency 
quite strong, and very common, to think of 
the Christian life as mainly a life " lived 
after the Christian rule." Men may say 
" Yes, Christ's way is the best way, and 
whether he now lives or not, we will follow 
his way." That kind of thinking about 
it, while it has its merits, and does some 
good in a way, is so far short of the best 
way that one is in doubt whether or not to 
call it a " splendid vice " of thinking. The 
New Testament does not present the Chris- 
tian life as a life lived after Christian rules 
but a life in partnership with Christ. Paul 
wrote that if Christ be not raised, our faith 
is vain. To him the living Christ was the 



58 Tillage of the Heart 

soul of living. Suppose a boy, left by his 
mother for a while, had a list of things given 
him, which he was to do for his health and 
comfort ; he would put them up where they 
would be his guide for a time. Suppose 
that days run on into months and years, and 
then he learns that his mother is dead. Do 
you not think that the deep-reaching influ- 
ence of that list would gradually wane until 
not much of it was left? The " mother" 
was out of it, and with " mother " went its 
best power. 

Suppose, now, that instead of the mother 
having died, she wrote weekly letters re- 
minding him of her wishes; and he wrote 
to her an account of how he was getting on ; 
would not his whole attitude toward that 
list, and his zeal in following it, and his 
enthusiasm in the tasks it assigned him, be 
very different and more helpful? Now, I 
know that this illustration is very inade- 
quate, and not quite true to the situation. 
But yet it brings to your notice the influence 
on our moral life which comes from our 
personality being matched by the sense of 
the personal Christ. I know that we do not 
have any weekly letters from Christ; I am 
not advocating any impossible mysticism; 



Nature's Assistance 59 

but we do all know that at times we have 
what Jeremy Taylor called the " practice of 
the presence of Christ.'' 3 It is not a com- 
mon thing; but have you not seen times 
when you felt as if Christ was with you? 
When some words of Scripture came into 
mind as if he was there to utter them? 
Well, what I am saying is that it will be 
a great help if we can cultivate a perma- 
nency of that kind of consciousness. 

Doctor Gordon once wrote a book called 
" How Christ Came to Church." Its origin 
was in a dream that he had. He saw a 
stranger sitting with the deacon. After 
church he asked the deacon who was with 
him. He replied, " That was Jesus. But he 
will come again." Jesus had heard Gordon 
preach about Jesus himself ! The reading 
of that book has made a marked impression 
on the preaching of many a minister. It 
drives out of the pulpit many sensational 
topics. He thinks, " What would Jesus say 
if he were to come and hear me in his name 
discuss such and such a thing?" It has 
smothered many arguments about higher 
and lower criticisms ; for the minister 

3 " Holy Living," Chap. I, Sec. 3; Jer. 23 : 24; Heb. 4 : 
13; Acts 17 : 28, 



60 Tillage of the Heart 

thought, " What would my Master say if 
he were to find me giving Sunday service to 
those endless discussions which gender strife 
but make no man holier or happier. It keeps 
out much human-wise philosophy, and all 
flamboyant rhetoric, and many domineer- 
ing tones. 

It gives a new dignity to think that Jesus 
is observant of our daily duties. Whether it 
be to cook or to sew; to sell goods or to 
make shoes; to doctor the sick or to nurse 
the babies, it is all a part of God's work, and 
Christ says do it " unto me." I wish the 
thought might be more in the hearts of our 
American people than it is, that manual 
labor is as Christlike as preaching. The 
graces of faithfulness, and honor, and truth, 
and love, may be just as prominent in the 
commonest labor as in the best of pulpits. 
The painter may be as kind as the preacher. 
So, I say, it will help you to think of your- 
self as doing all things as in Christ's pres- 
ence, and unto him. In that frame of mind 
every good thing in us puts on new life, 
as the showers quicken the verdure of the 
fields. " He shall come down like rain on 
the mown meadows." 4 

* Ps. 72 : 6. 



Nature's Assistance 61 

Let no one call this way of thinking 
childish thinking, and assume that a few 
men who say there is no personal God 
represent the real thinking of the world. It 
is not now, and never has been, the best 
thought of the best world. 

Professor Huxley, the man who appropri- 
ated the word agnostic to describe his re- 
ligious position about some things, said that 
he learned to believe in God when he fell in 
love with a girl. When he looked into a 
certain pair of eyes, abstract virtues became 
living realities; the world became a new 
place to him. All virtues seemed nobler ; all 
ambitions higher; the determination to be 
worthy thrilled every good thing in him. 
And, thought he, if a " person " in a girl 
thus glorified the abstract virtues, surely a 
Person somewhere glorifies the universe. 

Browning wrote: 

Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ulti- 
mate gift, 

That I doubt his own love can compete with it? 
Here the parts shift? 

Here the creature surpass the Creator — the end 
what began ? 5 

5 " Saul," XVII. 



62 Tillage of the Heart 

Professor Tyndall, who at times seemed 
almost yielding to the tendency to rob the 
universe of a God, and make all things 
consist in impersonal forces, could not rest 
in that view. " When," said he, " I see the 
fields becoming green and flowers springing 
up, I can but inquire: Do I represent the 
highest intelligence in the universe? And 
no one who is capable of being moved by a 
profound thought will be willing to ac- 
knowledge (what some have ascribed to 
me) the creed of an atheist/' 

The drift of the best thinking outside the 
church is now toward the position that a 
personal God must be at the center of all 
things. No other hypothesis accounts for 
all the facts. If there were not such a thing 
as an infinite person who has a will and an 
intelligence, then man, who has both will 
and intelligence, would be higher in the 
scale of being than all. " He that made the 
eye, can he not see? He that made the 
reason, can he not reason ? " The psalmist 
was only doing what we all must do at 
last when he said, " I cannot escape from 
thy presence." 

The third assistance will be found in 
regular attendance on the services of the 



Nature's Assistance 63 

church. We do not find in the Scriptures 
that Jesus commanded the organization of 
a church, or that men should go to church. 
The church grew out of the needs of 
Christian men and women. It has always 
been helpful for those who had a common 
aim to get together, and the church is 
simply a " getting together " for common 
aims. Doctors get help from the associ- 
ation of physicians; farmers get wealth of 
suggestion in their farmers' institutes; 
teachers could not keep up their standing 
in the wide-awake public schools of the 
day if they did not meet with those of 
the same craft and average their knowledge 
by comparing experiences. So we all gain 
by association in the worship and work of 
the church. If we think back over our lives, 
I am sure we all find that the sources of our 
best inspirations to duty, and the fountains 
for our greatest comfort, have been in the 
meetings of the church for prayer and con- 
ference, and in sermons we have heard in 
the public services. We were led to Christ 
very largely by the margin of influence 
which the church added to our home train- 
ing. And we have " received help until 
now " by the instruction and the stimulus 



64 Tillage of the Heart 

which church services have given. I am not 
forgetting the imperfections of the church. 
No one knows the imperfections better than 
the ministers themselves. Rev. Alvah Sabin, 
a godly minister in Vermont, who remained 
fifty-two years in one church, said at the 
fortieth anniversary of his pastorate, " I 
have no doubt that you have found fault 
with me in these forty years; but there is 
no one who has found more fault with me 
than I have found with myself." To which 
we ministers say, Amen ! But, nevertheless, 
the church associations, the united, singing 
of God's praises, the intelligent presenta- 
tion of the truth by the minister, the new 
views of the Christian privileges which the 
services often bring to us, and the very 
evident shining of the Spirit of God into our 
hearts in the places dedicated to his wor- 
ship as it does not shine in other places — 
all these will be helpful. I am made the 
more confident in this view of church-going 
by the fact that taking things as they are, 
the best average Christian life is found 
among those who are, as the political world 
would say, " candidates for it." We may 
not say that all who go are exceptionally 
good, nor that any who go are faultless. 



Nature's Assistance 65 

But the great current of goodness is found 
running out from the church-going portion 
of the people, like John's " river of life from 
out of the throne of God/' The man who 
wants help in being good will always do 
well to go where they make a business of 
cultivating it. A man seeking musical train- 
ing does not go to a labor union, but to a 
conservatory of music; the man seeking 
medical skill does not go to an art school, 
but a medical college. The churches are 
the schools for goodness; that is their 
special mission; and they will help all who 
seek their training. 

The fourth assistance is the study of the 
Scriptures with this improvement of life 
specifically in mind. The Scriptures, said 
Paul, are given that the " man of God may 
be thoroughly furnished unto every good 
work." He said they are " profitable for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness/' When John wrote his Gos- 
pel, he said he wrote it " that men might 
know that Jesus is the Christ, and that be- 
lieving they might have life." A friend of 
mine used to say that he did not think he 
knew a passage of Scripture until he had 
tried to practise it. This kind of study will 



66 Tillage of the Heart 

enrich you amazingly. Ask when you read 
it: 

How can this book nurse my virtue, nerve my 

will, 
Chasten my passions, purify my love, 
And make me in some goodly sense like Him 
Who bore the cross of evil while he lived, 
Who hung upon it when he died, 
And now in glory wears 
The victor's crown ! 6 

" How/' said the psalmist, " can a young 
man cleanse his way? By taking heed 
thereto according to thy word." 

The good of all Christian ages have been 
scripture students after that sort; not al- 
ways correct in their historical, or even theo- 
logical ideas of Scripture, but filled with 
the moral quality which sanctifies the book. 
The priests of the Jewish nation carefully 
taught their scriptures to all ; Jesus was fa- 
miliar with the Old Testament; the apos- 
tolic preaching was saturated with it; then 
Paul, with his great mind and greater wis- 
dom of love, gave us most detailed ideas of 
what is becoming for us to do. It will 
hardly be possible for you to read the book 
with the purpose to improve your life and 

6 Holland, " Bitter Sweet." 



Nature's Assistance 67 

not find it stimulating all that is good in 
you and rebuking all that is not good. 

The fifth aid to our cause is a high 
estimate of our own worth. I am aware 
that at first thought this will seem to some 
as at variance with the Christian teaching. 
We are all familiar with the doctrine of in- 
herent and total depravity. We have been 
taught to say that we are saved by grace 
alone, and to sing hymns that belittle our- 
selves. And from some standpoints that is 
well. For the purpose of justification, we 
have no merit sufficient to claim it. And it 
was in a discussion about justification that 
most of these things were written. Jesus is 
not reported as having said any such things. 
But we are in error when we think we 
have no true worth. Stating the case in a 
commercial way, it may be that we are 
properly called " moral bankrupts. " But 
suppose for a moment that that way of 
stating the case was a good one, and we 
reckon up our good deeds and put them in 
one column, ledger fashion ; and then 
reckon the bad deeds and put them in an- 
other column ; and suppose it is true that 
such a reckoning gives a balance against us, 
what then? are we therefore of no worth? 



68 Tillage of the Heart 

Take another commercial illustration. Sup- 
pose that a man had a franchise for a street 
railroad on Pennsylvania Avenue. He has 
been a poor manager; he has spent much 
and received less; he has no money in the 
bank; and he owes debts many and large. 
In what sense is he bankrupt? If he should 
be sold out, would the price of his " quick 
assets " be all that he would command in 
the market? Would not his franchise be 
worth a fortune? The right to do business 
on that avenue, when properly managed, 
will pay his debts, and much more. Now, 
if we are to take the commercial way of 
expressing this case of ours, admit that we 
have mismanaged our case; admit that we 
have not much to our credit, and a good 
deal to our discredit; yet is not our fran- 
chise to live worth something? Is it not a 
princely fortune in itself because of the 
possibilities it contains? The right to live 
and to do business ! The right to be called 
the children of God ! Is not that some- 
thing ? Let us look at the facts calmly. We 
are, among all the wonders of creation, the 
highest within our knowledge. The organ- 
ism of plants is less delicate than our eyes ; 
the instincts of animals, though more subtle 



Nature's Assistance 69 

than ours, are inferior to our reason; the 
strength of animals is inferior to our con- 
trolling inventions ; and nature itself is made 
to be subservient to man; so that from the 
goat to the elephant, animals become our 
servants. Then we have language, so that 
our invention of printing enables us to build 
on the experiences of the past as corals 
build their homes — up from the bottom of 
the sea to the sunlight. We have affections 
beyond any other creatures; and our re- 
ligious yearnings, which show us to be 
constitutionally related to two worlds. 
Then consider what goodness of heart and 
life have been in others ; and remember that 
every grace which any man has had is poten- 
tially, if not actually, ours. Such thoughts, 
I say, rebuke the slander which some, with 
pious intent, utter against themselves when 
they say they are " unworthy worms of the 
dirt." For myself, I do not admit that I am 
an unworthy " worm of the dirt." I am 
unworthy of what God does for me. But 
I am not a " worm," nor " of the dirt." I 
am a being in the image of God, and so are 
you. As Sir Thomas Browne put it, " There 
is surely a piece of Divinity in us, something 
that was before the elements, and owes no 



70 Tillage of the Heart 

homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am 
the image of God, as well as Scripture. He 
that understandeth not this much hath not 
his introduction, or first lesson, and is yet to 
begin the alphabet of man." 7 

For many centuries God has been inter- 
ested in men ; he taught them by the proph- 
ets and by the priests; he shaped human 
history to exalt them; and finally Christ 
came and lived and died for their sakes. 
He sent out his apostles and his church to 
tell men their worth, and his love ; his Spirit 
now comes to each one of us with its influ- 
ences to uplift us. Shall we then say of our- 
selves that we are worthless? If the psalm- 
ist, looking at the stars, could say, " When 
I consider the heavens, the work of thy 
hands, what is man that thou art mindful 
of him/' surely we, when we consider not 
only the work of God in the heavens but in 
history, may say, " Behold what manner of 
love the Father hath bestowed upon us that 
we should be called children of God. ,, 8 I 
think the strongest appeal to men is made, 
not through their fears of some punishment, 
but to their sense of personal dishonor to 
themselves when they come short of the 

7 " Letter to a Friend," p. 116. 8 i John 3 : 1. 



Nature's Assistance 71 

Christian life. For one to be obliged to 
say, " I, who have knowledge and oppor- 
tunity, am wasting upon trifles the possi- 
bilities God gave me. I am being a nobody 
when I might be somebody" ; this is awa- 
kening. One of the most common stimulants 
to all that is good in us is the thought of 
what an exalted life man, in many instances, 
has attained. Remember also that it is not 
the immature and worm-eaten apples that 
are the index to the tree, but the healthy, 
sun-ripened ones. That is what man's fran- 
chise to live implies. 

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit 

to employ 
All the heart and soul and the senses forever in 



joy 



i 9 



And the last general help I will mention 
is Work — some form of Christian work. It 
is one of the fundamental principles of edu- 
cation that the pupil must be encouraged to 
talk, and think, and do. He is a poor 
teacher who simply tells students facts, or 
gives advice. The aim of teaching is not 
to fill the head but to lead out latent 
powers. So, in the tillage of the heart, we 

9 Browning, " Saul," IX, 



72 Tillage of the Heart 

must exercise the particular part of good- 
ness which we seek to develop. It may be 
your field of operation is small, and your 
actual success is not satisfactory. But if 
you are practising you are gaining. 

The grace of faithfulness is as well cultivated 
in an errand boy as in a banker. The honesty 
of a small grocery is the same in kind as the 
honesty of a wholesale establishment. Kindness 
in a young working man is as fine as kindness in 
a king. And in the estimate of the world and of 
God it is the gold which the ore contains, not the 
place from which it was dug that gives it value. 
To know that you have practised the virtues in 
your own sphere brings all the comfort of a 
clear conscience that men in larger spheres ever 
find. 

To do the Christian things takes us in behind 
the scenes of Scripture and shows us the hearts 
of those who wrote. We get the experiences they 
had, and then we can understand the language. 

Then, to do the things we seek to culti- 
vate gives us fellowship with the best of 
earth. No matter where we live, or with 
whom we associate in ordinary matters, the 
sense of having done the Christian things 
gives us at once a fellowship with all who 
love Christ. Once, Mr. Moody was on a 
ship in mid-ocean, one thousand miles from 



Nature's Assistance 73 

Queenstown. The shaft had broken and 
penetrated the side of the ship, and it was 
slowly filling with water and no help in 
sight. There seemed to be no hope. Mr. 
Moody proposed to the captain that a meet- 
ing be held in the cabin for prayer, and all 
who prayed be invited. The captain re- 
plied, " Yes, I am one of that kind!' So 
in pleasanter circumstances, all those who 
have experienced the good that comes from 
practising the Christian life can say to all 
the good and great, " Yes, we are of that 
kind." 

Doing creates the habit of thinking and 
saying the things which are right, and that 
is goodness. Doing the things, the nature 
that God has given us and the sacred insti- 
tutions which his providence has furnished, 
will work for us night and day, and in the 
best sense we shall be " perfecting holiness 
in the fear of God." 



IV 



SPECIFIC HELPS FOR UPROOTING SPECIFIC 
FAULTS 

" Work out your own salvation with fear and 
trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both 
to will and to work for his good pleasure" — Phil. 
2 : 12, 13. 

I HAVE spoken to you on previous 
Sundays about the value of self-exami- 
nation to discover the blemishes or 
deficiencies which need remedying; and 
tried to impress the idea that a knowl- 
edge of our specific faults, while it may 
humble us, is nevertheless a good thing. 
And then we have considered together some 
of the things which constitute what we' 
called nature's assistance. Attention was 
called to health; and the sense of Christ's 
presence ; and a high estimate of ourselves ; 
and the practice of the virtues we seek to 
develop. 

This morning I wish to speak about spe- 
cific treatment for uprooting some specific 
74 



Specific Helps 75 

faults. I would preface what I have to say 
by the assurance that there is hope for 
success in this kind of endeavor. There 
may come to your mind the idea which 
came to Israel in Ezekiel's time, that we 
are so great sinners, and so steeped in the 
ways of sin, and have so often failed in our 
endeavors that " our hope is lost, our bones 
are dry." x We cannot ever overcome in this 
world, but must wait for the final exhibi- 
tion of the grace of our heavenly Father 
when at the last trump we shall be 
changed into the holy men and women we 
desire to be. When this mortal shall have 
been swallowed up of immortality, then, 
and not till then, we may hope for our 
victory. Until then we must wait and pray 
for patience. 

Others may think that such a hope is 
against the teaching of the accepted the- 
ology. I would not purposely belittle the-' 
ology, nor cast shadow upon the glory of 
what men have taught as the truth. I 
would speak with care, and with respect; 
but I must speak plainly, if at all. And 
I say that some of what is called theology 
is " pious lingo." I mean by that phrase 

1 Ezek. 37 : n. 



j6 Tillage of the Heart 

that it is pious, for it was formulated by 
pious people with pious intent; and is lingo 
because it has lost its meaning. It once had 
a meaning; the words of the Scripture 
which are woven into it meant great things 
in the circumstances under which they were 
uttered; but now these words have in large 
measure lost their connection with the facts 
of life. They are as Lowell said: 

Words which have drawn transcendent meanings 
up 

From the best passions of all bygone days; 

Steeped through and through with tears of tri- 
umph and remorse. 

Christ Jesus came into the world, and 
was introduced by the angel as the one 
who should be called Jesus, " for he would 
save his people from their sins." That is 
his special errand. And it does not mean, 
save them from sin in the abstract; nor 
from the sins which others have, and which 
they themselves ought not to have; but 
save them from the specific sins which they 
have. If he cannot do that, then he is mis- 
named Jesus, and should be renamed. 

If there is any theology which is in 
danger by such a hope as that, so much the 
worse for the theology. Our business and 



Specific Helps 77 

our hope is to " perfect holiness in the fear 
of God " ; and our text gives us encourage- 
ment to work out our salvation in the fact 
that God works in us toward the same end. 
In Genesis we are told that before the fall 
of Adam he was to dress and keep the 
garden. But after the fall he was sent 
forth to " till the ground/' for no longer 
does it bring forth fruit without tillage. So 
now we must " till the heart/' But it is not 
a hopeless task; seed-time and harvest will 
not fail ; the bow of promise bends over us 
in this text. 

Now, when a man lacks lung-power, 
he is taught exercises which correct that 
weakness. If he lacks muscular develop- 
ment, he is exercised specifically for that 
deficiency. On general principles we may 
expect that if we can know enough of our 
specific moral deficiencies, we may both up- 
root evil traits and supply sad deficiencies, 
and the text comes to us with that 
hope. Work out — that is, finish up — your 
salvation with fear and trembling, for it is 
God working in you — this very desire to 
overcome is from him — to will and to zvork 
for his good pleasure. That is the encour- 
agement and guarantee of victory. 



78 Tillage of the Heart 

One of the most helpful things is sug- 
gested by the Saviour's words concerning 
the empty house. He said that the un- 
clean spirit when he finds the house empty, 
swept, and garnished, goes and gets seven 
other spirits more evil than himself, and 
they enter in and dwell there. 2 That is, the 
heart and power of men must be occupied 
with something good, or the bad will get 
possession. And along with this is the 
truth which was expressed by Doctor Bush- 
nell in the title of a sermon, " The Ex- 
pulsive Power of a New Affection." If a 
man wants to uproot the tendency to go in 
bad company, he will do well not to be- 
come a hermit, but to seek good company; 
let him be a social man, but on a higher 
level. If he has a tendency to light and 
trivial talk, his wise way is not to stop talk- 
ing, but to talk about more worthy things. 
If one has a genius for business, he is not 
to quit his business activities, and his 
money-making habits; but rather to attach 
his business ability to some worthy cause, 
and then do business " unto the Lord." 
The remedy for a hot temper is not to be- 
come a spineless, indifferent sort of a non- 

2 Matt. 12 : 44. 



Specific Helps 79 

entity — not to lose one's temper, but to con- 
trol it, and make it do service in a good 
cause. The remedy for wilfulness is not to 
give up under every pressure, but to under- 
take that which will call for all the wil- 
fulness one has. This, I say, is a good 
general rule. 

To come to more specific things — and 
while I would speak with all sympathy, I 
must speak plainly about this matter. Sup- 
pose a man has a habit of taking stimulants. 
In his best moments he feels that he is not 
right. He at times participates in what he 
well knows is contrary to good Christian 
practice in such matters. But he likes the 
taste and the effect of it. What can he 
do? I would say, let him not seek to be- 
little the sense of danger, but to cultivate a 
still keener sense of it. Let him note how 
it has already begun to make him insensible 
to its evil ; he is not so much ashamed of it 
as he used to be; he would drink more if 
it were not for his family; he is already 
framing arguments to defend it, and ex- 
cuses for it. Let him remember that his 
appetite for it is the same in kind, as that 
which makes the drunkard's shame. Let 
him note the effect on others, recalling the 



8o Tillage of the Heart 

fact that of the men who forsake the church 
of Christ, nearly all of them go because 
of this same love of drink. Let him read 
the Scripture and see how the experience 
of ages has crystallized into the proverb: 
" Look not upon the wine when it is red, 
when it giveth its color in the cup, when 
it moveth itself aright. At the last " — not 
at the first, but at the last — " it biteth like a 
serpent and stingeth like an adder. " 3 

Then he will do well to analyze his ap- 
petite. It may come from some physical 
weariness. He has exhausted strength of 
body and nerve in a laudable endeavor to 
support his family; he has been over- 
worked and, it may be, insufficiently nour- 
ished ; the stimulant gives a temporary spur 
that appears to rest him. If that is the case, 
let him seek the needed help in other ways. 
Let him sleep more, and feed better. 

It may be that his reason is a sort of 
lonesomeness. He drinks to drown sorrow, 
and he has sorrow enough to overwhelm 
him. In that case, let him seek some cheer- 
ful company; get into touch with some 
good family and visit there ; or form an ac- 
quaintance with the Y. M. C. A., and go 

8 Prov. 23 : 31. 



Specific Helps 81 

there; or, better yet, get into some helpful 
temperance work for the young; or visit 
the sick and the afflicted to do them good. 
All this has in it the element of mind cure, 
but in many cases it is very effective. 

If his habit has gone so far as to be a 
gnawing, craving appetite, it has taken the 
form of a disease, and it needs medical 
treatment. Consult some good physician 
and tell him the truth. That phase of ap- 
petite is remediable with medicine. It is 
not necessary to go to a Keeley cure; but 
that would be honorable. Do not allow 
yourself to think it is disgraceful to be 
treated for such a trouble; it is common- 
sense to use the remedies God's providence 
has put within reach; take the remedy and 
pray God to help you, and you will come 
off conqueror; it has been done in thou- 
sands of cases. God wills to work in you 
to conquer that habit. 

It may be you are burdened by sins of the 
tongue. That sin has many ramifications. 
The first help I would suggest is sincerely 
to offer the prayer of the psalmist, " Set a 
watch, O Lord, before my mouth ; keep the 
door of my lips." 

Then take your concordance and go 



82 Tillage of the Heart 

through it, looking up the passages of the 
Bible which tell about the sins of the 
tongue; this will emphasize your sense of 
its evil character. Then read and think 
about what you can find in books and ser- 
mons on the subject; in this way you will 
get the estimate of your fault which your 
friends will not feel like giving to you. 

Then take some time, often at night, to 
review your speech of the day, to see 
wherein you have done evil, and discover 
the root of the matter, and thus be able to 
guard the next day's talk. Especially in- 
quire, "Why did I say that thing?" You 
may find that the evil grows out of envy; 
that is, you do not like others to have more 
compliments or a greater reputation than 
yours. " Envy," says the Scripture, " is 
rottenness of the bones." If you find that 
is the root, prayerfully undertake to do 
good to those whom you envy. This is the 
best antidote for it. 

It may be you mean no ill, but you have 
a satisfaction in showing your ability to 
analyze people. So you take them all to 
pieces like a surgeon in the dissecting- 
room, and talk over all of what you think 
are the motives. That is a common fault. 



Specific Helps 83 

Your trouble is that you do not give im- 
portance enough to words; they seem to 
you as so much breath breathed out, and 
that is the end of it. But as you study the 
effect of speech, you will find that all words 
leave a residuum behind them. In some 
brick arches over the railroad in Philadel- 
phia, the moisture filters through and drops 
down in the street like pure water. At the 
point where it comes through the brick there 
gather little deposits of lime like the stalac- 
tites in caves. This is the residuum of lime 
which the little drops of water left behind. 
They looked like pure water, but the lime 
was in them, and some of it remained to 
tell the story of the water's visit. So 
some kinds of talk, which were not intended 
to be harmful, do, nevertheless, leave be- 
hind permanent effects — little stalactites of 
unkind feelings remain in memory. 

In such a case, stop and ask your- 
self, " Why do I do this ? " And then ask, 
" Does it help to make those whom I thus 
dissect to be better? Does it make those 
to whom I say this better? Does any one 
have greater confidence in my friendship? 
Am I myself any better for it ? " And then 
resolve that you will not discuss people at 



84 Tillage of the Heart 

all. But you will say, "We must talk; 
what shall we talk about ?" Keep some 
good, large subject in mind on which you 
read and think. When you go to call, 
think beforehand what you are going to talk 
about. Predetermine the course of con- 
versation. Perhaps have several themes in 
mind so that if one fails you can take an- 
other. There are plenty of them : " Flowers 
and their cultivation " ; " Laws of health 
and how to keep them " ; " The best way to 
lead the minds of children "; "the beauties 
of some good book " ; " the women of the 
Bible " ; " the women of history " ; " the cost 
of good living " ; " the history of some mis- 
sion field." Our age is full of topics and 
good reading on the topics — hundreds of 
them — any one of which will occupy your 
speech and crowd out the discussion of 
people. If you cannot succeed in turning 
the conversation in good channels, try to 
practise the German statesman's virtue: it 
was said of him that he could be silent in 
seven languages ; you ought to be able to be 
silent in one. 

It may be that you are given to exag- 
geration in speech; then try to talk as if 
you were in court, and would be called to 



Specific Helps 85 

account for your sayings; for you are in 
court all the time. " For every idle word 
we shall give account," said the Saviour. 
It will help correct this habit of exagger- 
ation to speak only after you have swiftly 
glanced over your authorities for your state- 
ments. If you are to tell the height of a 
building, think how you know, and where 
you got your information; if you state a 
fact in history, recall where you read it; if 
you describe a thing, describe it as if some 
one who saw it with you were present to 
hear you do it. After a little, and it will 
not take long, you will come to have so 
much real satisfaction in the accuracy that 
you will love to be accurate. 

It may be that you are covetous. Doctor 
Ashmore told me once that he had asked 
several men, who were together, for a defi- 
nition of covetousness, and they were unable 
to give him an answer. Covetousness is 
that estimate of money which gives it more 
value to us than doing right. Any decisions 
we make in which we decide for the money 
against right is the result of covetousness. 

At Northfield, this summer, I asked some 
Christian people who were boarding at the 
same place, what they thought was the pre- 



86 Tillage of the Heart 

vailing weakness of the church life in the 
cities. They said, " Commercialism. " That 
meant, from their standpoint, that in the 
ministry, and in the pew, things were esti- 
mated according to the money value, more 
than by the righteousness they contain. I 
suppose that is one phase of covetousness. 
And the air is full of it. 

I once told a member of the church of 
which I was pastor that such and such a 
man had been converted and wished to 
unite with the church. He replied, " Is he 
a man of property?" Even our so-called 
religious papers are saturated with the same 
commercial view of things. They parade 
the fact that a minister's salary has been 
raised, or he has accepted a call to a larger 
salary, as if that were the main thing. If 
this excessive estimate of money has pos- 
session of you, you will find help by taking 
thoughtful estimate of what you think of 
one who cares for you only as a boy cares 
for an orange — for what he can get out 
of it. 

How small you think a man is who has 
no friendship he will not sell for money! 
No honor, no truth, no ambition which does 
not have its money price! What a small 



Specific Helps 87 

influence such a man exerts on men! He 
gathers riches, but they do little good. How 
soon his place fills up when he dies ! About 
a week, and he is forgotten. Study the 
meanest money sharks you know, and see 
how little satisfaction there is in their life. 
Money has value ; moneymakers have great 
usefulness, but a "man's life consisteth not in 
the abundance of the things he possesseth." 4 
Even those who have wealth, and are useful, 
get their real value to the world, not so 
much from the wealth as from the qualities 
it is the sign of, and the good motives and 
good judgment they have in the use of it. 
Young men will find great good in study- 
ing the lives of the rich to see how the man 
who has only money takes the smaller, in- 
ferior parts in the drama of life. And how 
much true greatness may be yours without 
riches. The rich are remembered not so 
much for their victories in getting money 
as their victories over it after they get it. 

It may be you blame yourself for your 
lack of interest in missions : You put some- 
thing into the basket when it comes around, 
but you do not feel any satisfaction in it. 
I think you will find help in that matter if 

4 Luke 12 : 15. 



88 Tillage of the Heart 

you can give to what the missionary secre- 
taries call " specifics. " That is, have some 
special thing in which you are interested, 
and in which you can trace your own gifts. 
The real point of interest for all good giv- 
ing is the person who is to be benefited. It 
does us no good to give to a basket, or even 
to a society. We must feel that the basket 
or the society is but the channel through 
which our gifts go to some persons. Find 
some family that has need and give your 
interest along with the money, and you will 
love to give ; get track of some young man 
and make it easier for him to get an educa- 
tion; choose some mission and send your 
money to that for a time, and study its 
progress and you will find missions will 
have a new charm. I think we shall come 
by and by to the place where as churches 
we shall have villages in China and Japan, 
whose mission work we take care of. And 
then, when some of us go abroad, we will 
see what changes have been wrought there 
by the gospel and will report to our home 
churches the facts. Then, of giving, we 
may say as was said of mercy, it is twice 
blessed. Giving is never the best giving un- 
less it prompts to thanksgiving. 



Specific Helps 89 

Perhaps you are excessively proud of 
your blood, or family, and it makes you un- 
sympathetic with those of a different sta- 
tion in life. (I am supposing that you 
have Christian feeling, and some Christian 
knowledge.) You know that this feeling 
you have is not right, but it is hard for you 
to rid yourself of it. If you examine your 
feeling, you will find it originates in a shal- 
low view of people. You are judging them 
by their outside rather than their inside. 
If you could get into more intimate touch 
with the classes you now shrink from, you 
would find that the rare virtues which you 
do admire are quite as common, and as 
genuine with them as with others. It is 
circumstance and separation that has kept 
you in ignorance of them. If you can get 
into some closer touch with such people, 
you will find your estimate growing. Get 
into relations with some of the Italian or 
Hungarian families of your city, and you 
will find that those mothers love their chil- 
dren as you do yours; that fathers take 
pride in sons as you do; that they all have 
their yearnings after better things; they 
have their inner struggles; but, best of all, 
they love our common Saviour, Tears come 



90 Tillage of the Heart 

to their eyes at mention of his goodness, 
as to yours. They make as much sacrifice 
for our common religion as you do. When 
you see these things, you will find that your 
heart goes out to them, and you will be rid 
of your shrinking from them. Read the 
Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. In the 
first chapter, he says the far-off aim of God 
is to gather into one Christ-centered family 
all nations of men. And in the second 
chapter, he says: Yes, we Jews were far 
from the Gentiles. But God raised us up 
together in Christ. And he made us sit 
together in heavenly matters. We are both 
brought nigh to him and to one another 
by the sacrifice of Jesus. The middle wall of 
partition is broken down. And now we are 
no more strangers, but fellow-citizens and 
of the household of faith. That tells the 
process by which the peoples of earth are to 
be kept in the right attitude toward one 
another. Christian experiences reduce us 
all to a common level of need; and then 
exalt us all to a common standing among 
his own family. 

It may be that you have a tendency to 
complain at your lot in life. It seems to you 
as if you have a harder time than anybody 



Specific Helps 91 

in the world. You will find help if you 
go to visit and help those who are worse 
off. 

Perhaps you have a censorious spirit. It 
is your easiest work to find fault, and to 
murmur about things in general. You will 
find help in this to take a larger view. Sup- 
pose for a little that you were in position to 
control, would you be able to do any better ? 
We all have to take the timber we have, 
and do the best we can with it. Up in our 
seminary we cannot make men. We can 
only train them a little. They are made in 
the homes and the home churches. If you 
were disposed to find fault with the semi- 
naries because they do not send out more 
and better ministers, take our place for a few 
minutes in imagination, and see what a 
problem we have. I am sure you will find 
less fault with us. So is it in most cases. 
If you will, in imagination, assume responsi- 
bility for a few minutes, it will help you 
to overcome the faultfinding spirit. 

But I have said enough to show you that 
faults have roots out of which they grow. 
If you can find the roots you can quite 
effectively dispose of them. You can be 
conquerors, and more than conquerors, 



92 Tillage of the Heart 

through Christ's help. I am not saying that 
you will get into perfection at once. Nor 
am I saying that you will get past your 
need for struggle and watchfulness; that 
will not come in this world. But you will 
make a steady progress, and become more 
and more like the Christian ideal. I urge 
you not to be discouraged, but with care ex- 
amine your hearts and find the roots of 
your faults; then, with prayer and perse- 
verance, undertake to remove them. For — 
to keep to our figure of tillage — harvests are 
not the work of a day, but of a season. The 
early and the latter rain are required. But 
in " due season ye shall reap, if ye faint 
not " ; " for it is God who worketh in you 
to will and to do of his good pleasure." 



THE AIM OF OUR TILLAGE, AND HOW WE 
LEARN IT 

"He that saith he abideth in him ought him- 
self also to walk, even as he walked" — I John 
2 : 6. 

AS long as two thousand six hun- 
dred and thirty-four years before 
Christ, Chinese history tells of the 
use of the magnetic needle as a guide in the 
fog. This needle's peculiarity, as we know, 
is that when it is poised nicely, so that it is 
free to turn, it will under every circum- 
stance swing on its pivot, and after va- 
cillating back and forth soon settle down, 
pointing to the north. The mystery of this 
propensity still baffles the scientist, and 
excites his wonder. This propensity well 
illustrates a noted phenomenon of our life 
older than Chinese history. It is found in 
all men since men have been known. Every 
one has within him a certain mysterious 
something which, when he is free to follow 

93 



94 Tillage of the Heart 

its impulses, turns his conduct toward a 
certain direction. A man may, by his family 
connections, or by health, business, politics, 
church connections, or other environment, 
be hindered from following what is his 
inner choice of life; but when some crisis 
arrives which sets him free from his bond- 
age to environment, that inner mystery 
turns him to his inner choice. We see this 
exemplified in cases where men go from 
home to new countries, or cities; they at 
once follow their inner choice. It may be 
that they appear to become better men, or 
perhaps worse men ; but in reality they only 
reveal what they have all the time been at 
heart. 

This inner mystery, which thus draws 
men toward what they would like to be, has 
so far escaped scientific explanation. The 
character of a mystery clings to it. Per- 
haps for our use it will be acceptable to call 
it the instinct of self-satisfaction, or self- 
preservation ; or, in its best form, the instinct 
of self-completion. 

It has its parallel in the physical world. 
The flower is thrilled from its rootlet to the 
tips of its leaves, with a wondrous, ceaseless 
activity in perfecting its fruit. The body of 



Aim of Our Tillage 95 

a healthy child is, without our help, working 
in accord with its constitution to mature 
the body. Its various functions work au- 
tomatically to make blood and bones and 
muscle. So this mystery of life works 
to satisfy the " self." To change the figure, 
it might be called the propeller of life. 

As the wheel in a ship, which lies deep 
down and out of sight, exerts itself against 
wind and current to move the ship in its 
course, so this instinct maintains our en- 
deavors toward the haven of our desires. 
It is a " constant " force. 

The gunner aims his piece high above 
the target, and fires it with a charge that 
sends the shot flying at two thousand or 
two thousand two hundred feet a second. 
An inexperienced man might think that it 
would, by its velocity, escape the force of 
gravity, and endlessly fly on into space ; but 
we know from invariable experience that, 
while the force with which it is sent out is 
exhausting itself with the resistance of the 
air, the force of gravity, with no diminution, 
and no intermission, is pulling the shot 
earthward; and after a little it will either 
strike the target on its way down or be 
humiliated upon the earth itself. This force 



96 Tillage of the Heart 

the mathematicians call a " constant " force. 
So this inner " mystery " of ours is a " con- 
stant." It must be reckoned with in all 
moral calculations. A traveling salesman 
told me that when he is selling goods to a 
new customer, he always tries to find out 
what the man's ambition is. Does he have 
a family to care for? Is he trying to edu- 
cate them? Is he seeking to build up a 
business? Is he paying for a home? Or, 
is he a bit of flotsam on the business sea? 
The answer he gets to these questions de- 
termines the amount of credit he will give 
him, for he is sure that that man's inner 
purpose in life, if he has one, will regulate 
his business integrity. The young woman 
who goes abroad for a musical education 
chooses her cities of residence where mu- 
sical opportunities abound. She selects her 
hotel, or pension, and picks her companions, 
with reference to the same purpose. If she 
goes abroad to obtain a title, she goes 
where titles are procurable with what she 
has to furnish. It is a great feature of 
human life. We should be dehumanized if it 
were possible to obliterate this from our 
constitutions. 

And it is a great good to us; without 



Aim of Our Tillage 97 

that we could have no character; we could 
make no prophecy to-day how a man will 
act to-morrow : we should simply " be tossed 
to and fro, and carried about by every wind 
of doctrine/' 

This is as true of those who have a good 
purpose as for those who have a bad one; 
and men are as steadfast in pursuit of 
wrong ends as they are in the following of 
good ones. 

Out of this constitution of ours grows 
the importance of securing a good aim in 
life. If this inner " mystery " is always 
lending itself to the aim, whether that aim 
be good or bad, What sort of persons do 
men seek to become ? What haven do their 
ambitions seek to reach? or, to put it in 
other phrase, What is their aim? are vital 
questions, for the difference between men 
morally is found in the type of men they 
seek to be. The poet wrote : " 'Tis not 
what man does which exalts him, but what 
man would do." x And Paul had a similar 
view when he said : " It is not I that do it, 
but sin that dwelleth in me." 2 

At this point we are met by a very 
common error in speech and thinking. It 

1 Browning, " Saul," XVIII. 2 Rom. 7. 

G 



98 Tillage of the Heart 

is said, " Conscience will give direction to 
us. If we would only be more conscien- 
tious, we should be in the right path." I am 
sure none of us would speak lightly of con- 
science, or of conscientiousness. But we 
must speak truly; and it is not true that 
conscience gives us any direction about 
where the haven of our desires ought to be. 
Conscience is of no more value in sailing 
the voyage of life successfully without in- 
struction and ideal than a compass is in sail- 
ing the ocean, if there is no chart to supple- 
ment it ; and no desire to get anywhere in 
particular. Conscience only presses home 
on us the sense of oughtness. It says : 
" You ought and you must, if you crave 
peace, do what is right. Woe is to the man 
who does not do what is right." But it 
never tells what is right: that must come 
from the ideal and from instruction. To 
trust ourselves, or those under our care, 
to the guidance of conscience without in- 
struction, is like turning a child loose in a 
drugstore when it is ill. No! Our in- 
telligence has its functions as well as our 
conscience, and both are needed to give 
us true goodness. 

I have spoken formerly about the neces- 



Aim of Our Tillage 99 

sity of a right aim, or ideal. I wish to 
speak more fully about that this morning. 
The text points out the Christian's ideal. 
" We ought to walk as Christ walked!' 
John was not discussing this as a teacher 
of pedagogy, or of psychology, but his 
words are in harmony with our thinking in 
both these departments. The ideal of the 
true Christian is Christ. His inmost long- 
ing will be expressed in the prayer we sing : 
" More like Jesus would I be." " Every 
one that has this hope in him purifies him- 
self even as he is pure." 3 

And by the way of parenthesis, I may say 
that as in the compass a needle will not 
point to the north, unless it has the mag- 
netic quality so that it responds to the 
mystery of the magnetic pole, so the inner 
instincts of our hearts must have the Christ 
quality or they will not respond to the 
Christ ideal. (I am speaking to such as 
have this quality; who have been mag- 
netized toward goodness.) The chief of 
what I would say is, that a man may hunger 
and thirst after goodness, and yet need to 
find out in detail what sort of a man he 
ought to be. We say, " Be like Christ," but 

3 1 John 3 : 3. 



ioo Tillage of the Heart 

he replies, " Yes, I want to be like him ; 
but how am I to know what he would do 
in my circumstances ? " 

A book was written, called " In His 
Steps/' 4 It has been translated into many 
tongues, and sold by millions of copies. It 
was originally a story, written by a minister, 
and read serially by chapters to his con- 
gregation Sunday evenings in lieu of a ser- 
mon. It is an utterly impracticable story; 
it abounds in theory which would not sanc- 
tify business, but destroy it. And yet, in 
spite of this, at first sight, seeming folly, 
there is present in the midst of its every 
scene, a kindly sort of a specter whom so- 
ciety does not fear, but welcomes. It does 
not speak, but it lends a charm to all the 
situations, and that is the endeavor to be 
Christlike. That gave the book its charm. 
We cannot walk in his steps literally, because 
he did not walk where we must go. He 
made no steps as a husband, or father, or 
business man, or pastor, or deacon, or 
Sunday-school superintendent, or choir 
leader, or political leader. But he exhibited 
certain great fontal traits of character which 
can control the life of men and women in all 

*Rev. C. M. Sheldon, Topeka, Kans. 



Aim of Our Tillage 101 

circumstances. Paul expressed the idea 
when he wrote to the Philippians, " Let 
this mind be in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus." 5 The mind of Christ. That 
is the norm of Christian life. 

How, then, do we get this in detail? The 
first source of our knowledge comes from 
those individual Christian friends whom we 
love in childhood. Something about them 
wins our confidence and affection. After a 
time we learn that they are Christians, and 
that they are what they are because they 
are Christians. Then we find other friends 
in whom these traits which we admire are 
strong; and we find that they are Chris- 
tians; we soon discover that these qualities 
are almost invariably associated with Chris- 
tians; then we come to think that they are 
a part of the Christian conception. And 
if we think of being Christians ourselves, we 
think that we must have such traits. These 
qualities are to us the trade marks of the 
kingdom. They manifest the Christ-spirit 
to us ; they are Christ manifest in his people. 

The second source of our ideal is the 
Bible. We have the Sunday-school les- 
sons, presented by teachers whom we re- 

5 Phil. 2 : 5. 



102 Tillage of the Heart 

spect; they tell us much, they show by 
example more of what Christ taught. We 
hear sermons which give us light and vision 
in some larger way. Then we read for our- 
selves the stories of Jesus, and the words 
of approved men in the Old Testament, and 
the instructions of the apostles ; and from 
them we get corrected and enlarged con- 
ceptions of the Christ-life. The detail of the 
portraiture of the good man in the New 
Testament is very striking. The specific 
instructions are numerous and accurate. 
For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, 
how full is the detail! At the outset we 
have the description of the general char- 
acter of those who are members of the 
kingdom; the poor in spirit, the men who 
sorrow for their sins, the hungry for 
righteousness, the meek, the merciful, the 
peacemaker, the pure in heart. Then fol- 
lows the responsibility of these to let the 
light shine, and to keep the world from 
corruption. Now we are told what to do 
with the " law " ; sins of the tongue are 
rebuked; formalism is condemned; the 
spirit in which we should do our religious 
work, and in which we should pray is in- 
dicated; and then our duties in connection 



Aim of Our Tillage 103 

with some of the great temptations of life 
get notice. Lest we should lack some de- 
tail, the fountain principle from which all 
flow is disclosed to us is in the Golden Rule. 
Going over into the writings of the apos- 
tles we find such things as these : Think on 
the things of others; be gracious to others 
as God is gracious to you; bear one an- 
other's burdens; be kindly affectioned one 
toward another. Again, " Add to your faith 
virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to 
knowledge temperance; and to temperance 
patience; and to patience godliness; and 
to godliness brotherly kindness; and to 
brotherly kindness love, for if these be in 
you and abound, they make that ye shall 
neither be barren nor unfruitful in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 6 
And then, as if he would be sure that 
the smile on the face of love should not be 
left out of the portrait, he gives us the 
thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, in 
which love is portrayed in a beautiful way. 
He tells us that love suffereth long and is 
kind, envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, 

• Peter i : 5-8, 



104 Tillage of the Heart 

thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things. It 
never faileth ; it is the greatest of the graces. 
It is astonishing, when we examine it, to 
see how specific the lines of the Christian 
ideal are made in the Bible; and they are 
all lines drawn with a fine brush dipped in 
the colors on the Christ palette, the cardinal 
hues of the Christian rainbow; and, if you 
please to continue the figure, in it you may 
find the Fraunhofer lines of the Christian 
spectrum. 

The ancient writer, who had less of a 
Bible than we have, said, " Wherewithal 
shall a young man cleanse his way? By 
taking heed thereto according to thy 
word." 7 We who have a book much more 
full, and the life of Christ in addition, cer- 
tainly find more abundant reason to honor 
the word. Oom Paul Kruger once said of 
the Bible in the company of some English 
and German soldiers who were discussing 
their national literature: 

I have not half mastered its glories, yet I have 
read it day and night for well-nigh forty years. 
When I have exhausted the Bible, I'll perhaps find 

7 Ps. 119 : 9. 



Aim of Our Tillage 105 

time for Shakespeare and Goethe. Tell me, had 
either of those men more wisdom to teach than 
I can learn from the book of Proverbs? Could 
either of them write such glorious lines as King 
David, the ancient poet of the Jews, has left us 
in his wondrous book of Psalms? Could either 
Shakespeare or Goethe have written the Songs of 
Solomon? If I want to read of hunting, I find 
it in the Bible. If I want to read of love, where, 
in all the books of the world, is love described 
so simply and yet so beautifully as in the Bible? 
If I want to read of war or ambition, need I go 
further than the Bible? If I want an example 
of patience, can I do better than study the book 
of Job? If I feel tempted by a woman, can I 
learn the folly of such things better than by pic- 
turing the mighty Samson shorn of his strength 
and his eyesight through the treachery of Delilah ? 
Do I think of the friendship of man for man? 
Tell me, you bookworms, where, in all the 
libraries of Europe, can I read of anything so 
well told as the love of David for his friend 
Jonathan? 

Can any books teach a son's duty to his father 
better than the Bible? What book or books can 
better guide a man in his duty to his country? 
Burn nine-tenths of the books in the world to- 
day, and give each boy and girl a Bible, and the 
next generation of men and women would be 
braver and better, more hopeful and courageous, 
more charitable and thoughtful, more lovable and 
more content than the men and women of to-day 
seem to be. 



106 Tillage of the Heart 

A third source of our ideal is our 
Reason, We take the great principles of 
Christ's life and teachings and apply them 
to the various situations and questions 
which arise. Love is the controlling motive, 
we are told. That is a sort of major 
premise in our reasoning process. We 
think " Love works no ill to his neighbor. 
Will this which I am about to do work ill? 
If so, then I may not do it." That was 
Paul's reasoning in the matter of eating 
meat offered to idols. He wrote, " If meat 
cause my brother to stumble, I will eat no 
meat while the world stands." 8 

In the matter of the Sabbath. Have you 
thought what a blessed institution the Sab- 
bath is? And have you remembered that 
of all the nations of the world none has had 
a day set aside in which the toiler was pro- 
tected in a day of rest? Listen to all the 
commands of all the kings in all the na-' 
tions, and you will nowhere find anything 
like the fourth command of Moses, the man 
of God. Everywhere is toil and labor for 
the common people all the time. But to 
Israel, God said, " Remember the Sabbath 
Day to keep it holy. In it thou shalt not 

8 i Cor. 8:13. 



Aim of Our Tillage 107 

do any servile work. Neither thou, nor 
thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man- 
servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cat- 
tle, nor thy stranger that is within thy 
gates." 9 Oh, how blessed that is ! The work- 
ing man may rest; the command of the 
superintendent may have no force that 
day; the children may see their father; the 
family may sing together the songs of 
praise to God, for God hallowed the Sab- 
bath Day and blessed it. Now there are 
strong temptations, and some wicked at- 
tempts to deprive the common people of 
this day of rest ; what is the Christian ideal 
duty in the matter? Reason must come in 
to help answer, and this must be the 
process : " Love worketh no ill to his neigh- 
bor. Will this loss of the Sabbath work ill? 
Then I must be on the side of preserving 
the day from toil." 

Or, take another matter, and we reason 
thus : " Jesus left the consummation of his 
work to his church; no other organization 
in the world has for its aim the preaching 
of this gospel of hope and comfort to men ; 
if the church does not attend to it, the lamp 
of God will go out in the world. We are 

9 Exod. 20. 



108 Tillage of the Heart 

members of his church. What, then, is our 
duty to the mission work of the church?" 

Or another, " Jesus' aim is that peace 
and good-will shall prevail in the world; 
and we are the light of the world. Does 
our duty lie in the line of great navies and 
armies, and military parades, and excite- 
ment of the war spirit, or in the line of 
those victories which peace hath, more 
glorious than blood-bought ones ? " 

There are sociological wrongs to be 
remedied. Christ said, " Do unto others as 
ye would that they should do unto you." 
What does reason say to us about our 
duty in these times when all the world is 
astir with awakening altruism? 

We must think out these matters. " We 
cannot direct the world life unless we can 
direct its thought." 

A fourth source for our ideal is en- 
vironment. This has several departments. 
We absorb it in a large measure uncon- 
sciously from our associations. It is a 
blessed thing for a young Christian to have 
the first impressive years of his church- 
membership in a church where the right 
ideals are common. I am sure that a man 
or woman who should be privileged to be- 



Aim of Our Tillage 109 

gin the Christian service here, in this 
church, where the spirit of forbearance and 
love are so marked, where the missionary 
work has so strong a hold on the hearts, 
where pastor and people are a unit in their 
ambitions to do good, will find a trend 
given to their lives that will be an im- 
measurable blessing in after years. If they 
go away, yet they will carry the impress 
of it for life. How different would it be 
if they went into a church where the trus- 
tees forbid a collection for missions be- 
cause the current expenses are wanting 
more money; and where the spirit of jeal- 
ousy among the members is rife, and the 
yawning gulf of discord gaps between pas- 
tor and people! We cannot overestimate 
the blessing of being where the standard of 
honor, and dignity, and reverence, and for- 
giveness, and zeal for others is high. 

And we are also affected by our reading. 
I examined yesterday one of our Phila- 
delphia papers, the one which has as much 
odor of sanctity as any of them — the " Pub- 
lic Ledger." I found on three pages of its 
news, sixty-two articles. Of these, eighteen 
were general world news ; eleven were cases 
of death or accident ; five told of noble deeds 



no Tillage of the Heart 

of men or women; and twenty-eight were 
the records of " man's inhumanity to man " 
— crimes, or divorce suits, or quarrels. I am 
not passing judgment on the papers, but 
I am saying that the reading of such things 
every morning for three hundred days in a 
year — not to mention the Sundays — must 
have a serious effect on the moral vision, 
and on the moral ideal of life, unless it be 
counteracted by some mighty power. It 
may be offset by reading much of the better 
sort of biography, where the better side is 
made prominent. 

A fifth source for our ideals is what 
may be called moral visions, or flights of 
moral imagination. Whatever they may be 
called, those are times when we imagine 
people in whom our notions of virtue and 
honor are carried up to completeness. We 
think of the men and women like whom we 
would be. We take the broken or embry- 
onic samples of virtues which we have 
and think of them as mended or matured. 
We put them into full measure and cor- 
rect proportion. We people our thought 
with such. We put into their hearts purity 
and love, and beautify their faces with 
kindness. We endow them with courage 



Aim of Our Tillage in 

and loyalty. We adorn them with the 
graces of politeness and courtesy. We honor 
them with the confidence of mankind. Then 
we build up communities of them, and 
think how blessed it would be if the world 
were all such; and how glorious it will be 
when that consummation has come ! These 
are, I say, flights of imagination. But what 
was our imagination given us for if not 
for such flights? What do we know of 
heaven except in that way? These times 
are " mountains of transfiguration " to us. 
We see not the coarse or soiled garments 
which the world wears, but the real glory of 
human life is revealed as it shines through 
its humble vestments, now " white as no 
fuller on earth can white them." The faces 
of men are made glorious to us. We see 
them and ourselves at their best. And we, 
like Peter, wish we could tabernacle in that 
state of mind. But we cannot; we must 
come down from the mountain, and we may 
find a demon there which alone we cannot 
cast out. But though we come down, we 
never come all the way down again. Those 
visions of what man can be give us an 
insight and an impulse which make life 
henceforth a different journey. There are 



ii2 Tillage of the Heart 

conceptions of the men and women we 
ought to be, and can be, which will beckon 
us on forever afterward. Our ideal of life 
is better and clearer. 

These, then, are the channels through 
which there comes to us our idea of the aim 
of life: our Christian friends, the Scrip- 
tures, our reason, our church environment, 
and these transfigurations. Each one is a 
God-appointed channel of blessing. We 
cannot have clear ideas without the use to 
some extent of them all. Jesus used them 
all, and we, to that extent, may walk in his 
steps. 



VI 



WHAT THE IDEAL IS 

"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your 
sakes he became poor, that ye, through his pov- 
erty, might become rich" — 2 Cor. 8 : g. 

LAST Sunday I spoke to you con- 
cerning the aim, or ideal, of our 
husbandry, and indicated some of the 
sources from which our conceptions of the 
Christian life come. In order to guard 
against the idea that such conceptions are 
wholly obtained either unconsciously or au- 
tomatically, I emphasized the teaching that 
we are to " work out " our own salvation 
in part, and to have courage in the work 
because God works in us to the same 
end. 

This morning I wish to speak to you, 
indicating some of the leading features of 
the ideal Jesus left to us by his own life. 

And, -first, I notice the high estimate 
which Jesus put upon the common life of 
the common man. 

H 113 



H4 Tillage of the Heart 

Paul wrote that Jesus, though he was in 
the form of God. . . yet made himself of no 
reputation, and took on him the form of 
a servant and was made in the likeness of a 
man — just an unadorned man; no titles; 
no adjuncts. 1 We should certainly have 
made a different arrangement. The Jews, in 
their notions of the Messiah whom they 
expected, thought that all Israel would be 
astonished at his light, and say, " Blessed is 
the hour of his birth, blessed is the eye that 
sees him, glory and majesty are in his ap- 
pearance. " They thought he would be edu- 
cated in human lore at royal expense as was 
Moses, and that the knowledge of God 
would come to him direct without having 
need to learn. 2 They could not think that a 
Messiah could exist without the help of ex- 
ceptional circumstances. Common human- 
ity was too cheap. The Roman Catholic 
Church, for theological reasons, has the 
same lack of honor for humanity. They 
must have him born of some other stuff 
than mortal woman. So they invent the hy- 
pothesis that Mary was exempt from the 
natural sin of her race — " immaculately con- 
ceived," as they express it. All this be- 

1 Phil. 2. 2 See Edersheira, Vol. I, Chap. V. 



What the Ideal Is 115 

littles the substance of humanity and exalts 
to front rank circumstances which are the 
mere trimmings of it. Jesus had a different 
view. He did not come to succor angels, 
nor kings, nor millionaires, nor college pro- 
fessors, nor theologians as such. A South- 
ern evangelist was once holding meetings, 
and Judge Corwin — " Tom Corwin " — of 
Ohio, was interested in the work. He 
called one evening to talk with the evangel- 
ist. He was told by that Elijah, " Judge 
Corwin will probably be excluded from the 
company of the saved." Upon his ex- 
pressed surprise at such a statement, the 
reply came, " Tom Corwin, the sinner, has 
a chance, but Judge Corwin is not known 
at the throne of grace." 

Christ came to save man as man, not as 
king or peasant, because as man he was an 
inestimable treasure for which Christ would 
give his life. It was men and women as 
such, neither honored nor smirched with 
taint of royal blood, neither ennobled nor 
debased with the fruits of greed, not puri- 
fied nor debauched with luxury — whom he 
sought to uplift. And, therefore, he came in 
the guise of such; not to be born in the 
palace of a king, nor the home of the rich, 



n6 Tillage of the Heart 

but in the home of a peasant carpenter, to 
the bosom of a godly peasant mother. It 
seems to me the Scripture story of the 
angel's words to Mary are the very naked- 
ness of truth, " Hail, Mary, highly favored 
. . . blessed art thou among women." 3 

No greater honor could have been given 
to sweet and pure womanhood than that 
this modest girl should be the mother of 
Jesus and that the Saviour of mankind 
should be entrusted to her untrained but 
loving hands. The Son of God wrapped in 
swaddling bands by her and laid in a 
manger, under her eyes ! 

Let me repeat this thought, for it easily 
escapes us. If King Edward Seventh were 
to come to America and should arrange to 
be entertained at the home of some coal 
miner, and truly spend his time among 
them, would not every miner in the land 
feel that if any stigma ever had attached 
to his occupation, it would now forever be 
removed? And he would be right in his 
view of the case. If the king should claim 
the hospitality of the Negroes of a city, it 
would remove the social lines with a shock 
hard to be forgotten. It would be a decla- 

3 Luke i : 28. 



What the Ideal Is 117 

ration unmistakable that the king honored, 
and meant to honor, the race of black men 
as fellow-mortals, and fellow-citizens of the 
kingdoms of men. But it is not less plain 
that Jesus, in deliberately choosing the fam- 
ily of a peasant, meant to set aside all those 
conceptions of the world which overlook 
the essential glory of plain, unadorned hu- 
man nature. And if Jesus were to return 
and come to this city, and into the family of 
some member of this church, he would not 
come to the family of any one whom you 
or the city calls great, or noted. He would 
certainly be found in the family of some 
godly, common man, some artisan of re- 
ligious faithfulness ; and some godly woman 
who does her own housework would be his 
mother. Not because he rejects the great or 
noted, but because he honors manhood apart 
from these incidents of life. Therefore, let 
us cultivate respect for our common em- 
ployments, and guard our heart against 
the tendency to measure men and women 
chiefly by the business they follow rather 
than by the way they follow it. This way 
of estimating mankind is no small part of 
the ideal he left us. 

And that we might see the ideal still 



n8 Tillage of the Heart 

more clearly, we have the record of his 
common life given in some fulness of detail. 

He was subject to his parents. That was 
a part of the Jewish training, and might 
have been assumed, but the record specifies 
the facts. Our young people will do well 
to heed that feature of the ideal. " Subject 
unto his parents ! " Up to full manhood he 
practised the command, " Honor thy father 
and thy mother." It is, therefore, essential 
for thoroughly Christian young people that 
they be likewise obedient. 

It is not only sorrowful for parents, and 
bad for children, but it is unchristlike to 
omit this virtue. With Jesus, it was so 
prominent that the glory of the later record 
did not make men forget this, but in the 
same book which tells of his resurrection, 
it is written, " He was subject to his par- 
ents." 

He was an industrious workman, laboring" 
with his hands. The Jewish people taught 
their sons some useful occupation. They 
dishonored drones in the hive. Jesus, in 
line with the best thought of his day, 
learned a trade. There were houses in 
Nazareth which he helped to build. There 
were pieces of plain furniture in some of 



What the Ideal Is 119 

those homes which were the products of his 
handicraft. His hands were hard with 
manual labor. We shall do well to note 
that it is a tendency of our time, and 
especially of the old American stock of our 
people, to think that the man who lives by 
his wits is more noble than he who lives by 
hard work. Our public schools have been 
under that delusion to a certain extent, and 
have aimed in their courses at fitting young 
men to live without soiling their hands, 
thus casting a shadow upon the dignity of 
honest skilled labor. They are now turning 
to the right path. Not until hand labor 
ceases to be regarded as an unwelcome mem- 
ber of the glorious galaxy of human occupa- 
tions shall we have seen clearly the whole 
ideal that Jesus left us. 

Again Jesus " got an education." The 
scribes said in astonishment, " How know- 
eth this man letters, never having learned ? " 
That was an admission that he knew them. 
He did not " go away to school." He was 
not, like Paul, "brought up at the feet of 
Gamaliel." His people were too poor for 
that expense. But he was educated in the 
schools that were available for all the boys 
in his village. He got his education by the 



120 Tillage of the Heart 

only way that any boy gets an education. 
There are three rules for that, and they 
are infallible. They are: Observe, Think, 
Practise. No school can do anything for a 
student who does not do those three things. 
And no student who does them will fail 
to be an educated man. He may not be 
learned, but he will be educated. Jesus 
heard the Scriptures read and explained in 
the village synagogue. He also learned to 
read them himself. We hear much about 
President Eliot's " five feet of books." 
Jesus had a library of less than five inches. 
It contained thirty-nine small books, or 
manuscripts. They were the books we bind 
up in one as our Old Testament. These 
books told the history of his country and 
people as well as any history we have of 
the United States. They were enriched 
with splendid biographies ; contained most 
wonderful poetry; brought to the people 
high moral principles and specific com- 
mandments ; discussed governments ; taught 
religion. One does not half realize, unless 
his attention is concentrated upon it, what 
a rich library those thirty-nine books con- 
stituted. But it was not exclusively his. It 
was open to all the boys of his town. He 



What the Ideal Is 121 

gained more from it than others because 
he read it more observantly, thought about 
it more carefully, and practised its teachings 
more faithfully. But we have his library, 
and the New Testament in addition, so 
that our material for an education is more 
abundant than his. 

At one of the meetings of the London 
School Board, the late Professor Huxley 
spoke on this wise: 

I have been seriously perplexed to know by 
what practical measures the religious feeling, 
which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be 
kept up, in the present utterly chaotic state of 
opinion on these matters, without the use of the 
Bible. Take the Bible as a whole; make the se- 
verest deductions which fair criticism can dictate 
for shortcomings and positive errors; eliminate, 
as a sensible lay teacher would do if left to him- 
self, all that it is not desirable for children to 
occupy themselves with, and there still remains 
in this old literature a vast residuum of moral 
beauty and grandeur. And then consider the 
great historical fact that for three centuries this 
book has been woven into the life of all that is 
best and noblest in English history; that it has 
become the national epic of Britain, and is as fa- 
miliar to noble and simple, from John o' Groat's 
House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso wer^ 
once to Italians; that it is written in the noblest 
and purest English, and abounds in exquisite 



122 Tillage of the Heart 

beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that 
it forbids the veriest hind who never left his vil- 
lage to be ignorant of the existence of other 
countries and other civilizations, and of a great 
past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the 
oldest nations in the world. By the study of 
what other book could children be so much hu- 
manized, and made to feel that each figure in that 
vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but 
a momentary space in the interval between two 
eternities, and earns the blessings or the curses of 
all time, according to its effort to do good and 
hate evil, even as they also are earning their pay- 
ment for their work? 

From his words afterward, we know that 
Jesus was observant of nature. He watched 
the birds and flowers. He saw the farm- 
ers at their work, and the fishermen at their 
nets. He saw the children at their play, and 
noted their talk. When he went to Jeru- 
salem to the yearly worship, he noted the 
customs and conduct of priests and Levites. 
He was a student of life in all its forms. 

And then he thought about what he saw. 
He reasoned : " If God clothes these lilies, 
will he not clothe men ? If this father gives 
good gifts to his children, will God forget 
his creatures ? If an unjust judge will yield 
to importunity, will not a just God hear our 
requests? If human kings will judge their 



What the Ideal Is 123 

enemies, will God be always patient? If 
men ought to pay taxes to their Caesar, 
ought not we to pay our debt of honor to 
our God? If we call God Father, ought 
we not to be like him ? " And so on 
through the whole gospel record we see that 
Jesus thought into things, and about things, 
until the commonplace facts of life became 
almost vocal to him with truth about God 
and duty. Life was a book to him, in 
which the invisible things of God were to be 
seen continually. 

But the same life surrounds us. Suns 
shine, rains fall, moons rise and set, chil- 
dren play, old men counsel, godly folk live 
and love here and now. The book of life is 
open to us all. He set us the example of 
observing and thinking and practising. It 
will educate us as it did him. We can come 
into fellowship of all the God-loving and 
God-honoring if we try. 

He was active in church matters. He 
went to the temple services from child- 
hood. In his own town he was a regu- 
lar and helpful attendant in the services in 
the little synagogue; for we read that he 
"went into the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day and stood up to read, as was his cus- 



124 Tillage of the Heart 

torn." And when he had read, he ex- 
pounded the chapter with beauty and wis- 
dom, so that they were delighted at the 
" gracious words which proceeded out of 
his mouth. " 4 This element in his life is 
worthy of note. There is always to young 
men a period which some call the " smart 
age." They feel like deserting the family 
pew in the church, and, perhaps, the family 
church itself. The customs of worship, long 
revered, become irksome; they seem to be 
too narrow. Those who think carefully 
will not be angry at this; they may be 
anxious. These young men are simply 
" individualizing " themselves. It is a proc- 
ess of human nature in its legitimate 
growth. It is the same innate instinct that 
makes the chick leave its mother's wing and 
seek to roost beside her. It is no censure, 
young men, that we are uttering, but your 
friends will pray that in this process you 
may look much at the example Jesus gave 
you. He had his larger thoughts, but he 
did not forsake the place of worship to his 
Father in heaven. He did not assert nor 
claim independence of God. 

Agfain he was publicly identified with the 

4 Luke 4, 



What the Ideal Is 125 

cause of religion. When John the Baptist 
came, he aroused a great religious interest 
throughout Judea. Jesus did not stand off 
in a conscious independence of need. He 
did not say, " Yes, they are having a 
revival in the church. And they need it." 
But he went to John and said, " I want to 
be identified with this, for God is in it." 
When John said, " You do not need this," 
he replied, " Thus it becometh us to fulfil 
all righteousness." He knew that all public 
religious advancement needs all religious 
men. The cause now needs the active sup- 
port of all who have the cause as a whole at 
heart. Mere differences in detail should not 
hinder. Even the imperfections of any 
single work should not deter us from get- 
ting into touch with the best we can find. 
If all was perfect, we should have no need 
to do anything. As long as all is not per- 
fect, we must be willing to work with the 
imperfect. 

Thus, with daily faithfulness, Jesus lived 
his life as a common man. If he had died 
before he came to his public work, yet he 
would have left an ideal life record. He 
might not have been widely known among 
men. He would not have been so influen- 



126 Tillage of the Heart 

tial, but he would have been as ideal in his 
life. 

In the factories they make a kind of 
cloth called " print cloth." It is white, and 
unsuited for use. It is taken to other places 
and figures are printed on it. Then it is 
called " print," or " calico." It required a 
finishing process to make it into marketable 
shape. There is another kind of cloth in 
which the threads are colored before weav- 
ing. Thus the figure is woven in, and 
shows on both sides alike. There is no 
wrong side. That is " gingham." Jesus' 
life had no wrong side. It was of the ging- 
ham kind. His character needed no future 
processes to make it good. Its beauty was 
woven daily in the love of men and God. 

The second great element in his ideal, 
growing out of the first, is a world-wideness 
of sympathy. It is written in that classic 
verse of John, "■ God so loved the world." 
Again, it is recorded that Jesus said, " This 
is the will of God that whosoever seeth the 
Son and believeth on him shall have eternal 
life." 5 So, also, in the Great Commission, 
" Go into all the world and preach this 
gospel to every creature." 6 This feature 

5 John 6. «Mark 16. 



What the Ideal Is 127 

of his ideal has always had to contend 
with a certain tendency among men to nar- 
rowness. The national pride was strong 
among the Jews, and was very slow to give 
way to this idea. It has still a representa- 
tive in the notion of so-called " Anglo- 
Saxon supremacy.'' Race prejudice also 
arrays itself in opposition to the broad 
sympathy of Christ's ideal. It looks with a 
disdain on the peculiarities and customs of 
another people as if they were actual in- 
feriorities. One would suppose that it is a 
mortal sin to braid the hair like a China- 
man, and a virtue to cut it short like an 
American. Theology also comes in to hin- 
der, for it insists that certain explanations 
of things, explanations possible only to a 
peculiar type of mind, are essential to God's 
love and favor. These were all active in the 
early days of the gospel. It was the con- 
flict over these that Paul was engaged in 
when he was sent to prison, and his zeal 
in the conflict which was back of his im- 
passioned letter to the Galatians, and which 
gave birth to the noble and dignified treatise 
of Ephesians. But, whatever the opposi- 
tion, there stands in the record the cross 
of Christ. And as Moses lifted the serpent 



128 Tillage of the Heart 

up into full view of all the camp of Israel, 
that all who looked might live, so Jesus 
is lifted up into human view that " who- 
soever believeth on him shall not perish." 
No man has anything like an adequate view 
of the ideal feeling toward humanity who 
has not seen, and does not feel that the 
whole human family are his prospective 
partners in the kingdom of God, and are 
entitled to his sympathy and help. We need 
to pray for eyes to see this feature more 
clearly, and for hearts to be thrilled by it. 
The Christian world is coming to see it. 
It gives comfort to remember that nations 
are seeing their duty to all ; that " the 
Parliament of man, the Federation of the 
world " is not much longer to be only the 
dream of a poet, but the accomplishment of 
statesmen. We see the far-sighted business 
men of China who will give a foundation 
for Christian teaching. We find commer- 
cial interests from Japan coming to see the 
wisdom of peace and friendliness. We 
rejoice in the counsels of The Hague actu- 
ated by the same spirit. May the Lord 
hasten the time when the ideal sympathy of 
Jesus will be the ideal of the world's people, 
and when we shall all be not only " fellow- 



What the Ideal Is 129 

citizens " of the kingdom, but " members of 
the household of God/' 7 

A third great element of Jesus' ideal is 
faith in God. Some scientist is reported to 
have said that " faith " is that degree of 
confidence in an idea which leads a man to 
trust its operation beyond where he has any 
assurance that it will be operative. That 
is not the Christian's definition of " faith." 
He would say, " Faith is that degree of 
confidence in an idea which leads him to 
trust its operation beyond where he can 
see that it is operative, because he has an 
assurance that God is in the idea, and that 
God can be trusted everywhere." Jesus was 
a man of that disposition of heart. No 
matter what difficulties arose, he never 
faltered, because he had no doubt of the 
ultimate issue. He was often saddened by 
the hostilities of the Jews; grieved at the 
slowness of heart of his disciples; but not 
in despair. In the illustrations he used this 
was very prominent. He told about the 
sower, and how some seed fell on stony 
ground, and other on the wayside, and 
other was choked with thorns. But, never- 
theless, it paid the farmer to sow, for some 

7 Eph. 2. 

I 



130 Tillage of the Heart 

seed brought forth an hundredfold. No 
farmer quit the business because the birds 
stole some of his seed. When he spoke of 
the tares sown by an enemy, he did not say, 
" Let us desert the field " ; but he said, " Wait 
until the harvest-time, and then this will get 
straightened out." When he told of the net 
which caught good and bad, he did not 
say, " Oh, let's give up the business ! " but 
he said, " They take out the good and cast 
the bad away." 

In all his talk there was no note of 
pessimism, but his faith in God was tri- 
umphant. He spoke of his death, but it 
was followed by the promise of his resur- 
rection. He admitted his humiliation, but 
he said, " The Son of Man will come in his 
glory." We shall have his ideal fully in 
mind only when we see that hopefulness is 
not only a fortunate and much to be appre- 
ciated disposition, but a grace to be culti- 
vated; and that a discouraged spirit is not 
only an uncomfortable guest in the heart, 
but an evil companion to be rid of, for it 
dishonors God. 

A fourth element was his patience with 
men. 

" How oft would I have gathered you." 



What the Ideal Is 131 

" Have I been so long time with you and 
you have not known me, Philip ? " " O 
slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken ! " " Could ye not watch with 
me one hour?" " But the spirit is willing 
though the flesh is weak." These are the 
signs of his " long patience." And he 
taught his disciples the same in the parable 
of the tares. " Shall we go now and up- 
root them all? " they said. " No," said he, 
" wait until the harvest." He knew the 
process of making good men was not an 
overnight one. There is a cultivation of 
graces which only time and experience can 
accomplish. There must come the trial of 
faith to produce the faith. There must be 
pain of heart to make sympathy genuine. 
There must be great need in the presence of 
great weakness to develop prayer. There 
must be sins forgiven to increase love. 
The shallow idea of the Christian life which 
is revealed in the phrase " get saved," and 
which in many other ways reveals itself in 
our common speech, had no place in his 
thought. He saw only the character of 
the heart, not the record of deeds; it was 
the fountain he examined ; and that is slow 
in being purified. But he was patient. We 



132 Tillage of the Heart 

shall do well to be patient likewise. Our 
best endeavors mature slowly; we see the 
seeming loss of work, the clinging faults 
in others and ourselves. God give us pa- 
tience born of faith which will hold on! 
" Let patience have her perfect work that 
ye may be perfect and entire, wanting noth- 
ing." 8 

Let us keep our minds in familiar ac- 
quaintance with the ideal and " be not 
weary in well doing, for in due season we 
shall reap if we faint not." 

8 James 1 : 3. 



VII 

THE POWER TO WIN 

"I can do all things in him that strengtheneth 
me. "—Phil 4 : 13. 

"For if these are yours and abound, they make 
you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowl- 
edge of our Lord Jesus Christ/' — 2 Peter 1 : 8. 

I HAVE spoken to you heretofore trying 
to emphasize the truth that for the im- 
provement of the Christian life we 
must have a right attitude toward it, 
and a correct ideal. I have assumed also 
that in you to whom I speak the heart has 
been touched by that Spirit which alone 
can make goodness attractive to us. If, 
as I hope, some have been moved to a new 
interest in the tillage of their hearts, I 
am sure you have met in your efforts 
a serious sort of difficulty. It has two 
phases: First, it may have become evi- 
dent that, to do your full duty, you must 
make some radical changes in your living, 
or in your plans. Even among Christians 
of long standing the search for their faults, 

133 



134 Tillage of the Heart 

or the clearer view of Jesus as a pattern, 
not infrequently reveals great deficiencies. 
These may be in the outward life, as in the 
business in which a man may be engaged, 
or the company which he keeps, the books 
which he reads, the amusements which he 
seeks ; or they may be the more subtle faults 
of bitter feelings and revengeful spirit. 
Sometimes it is an intellectual pride which 
refuses to accept religious truth on evidence 
which is good in every other department of 
thinking. Whatever the fault may be, the 
task of removing it looks too large for 
them. They individually say : " Knowing 
myself as I do, I am sure I cannot, in my 
circumstances, live the Christian life as I 
ought. I want to do so, but I cannot. I 
wish I could." 

The other phase of this work is that men 
get weary in well-doing. It is a fact in life 
with which we must reckon, that in every 
good day evil is present with us ; as, in Job's 
case, when the children of God came to- 
gether, " Satan came also." And why 
should he not come? If there was no 
good there, he would have no errand. The 
business of evil is to defeat good. And 
therefore, where good is, there it may be ex- 



The Power to Win 135 

pected to compete with it for the hearts 
of men. 

We read that Jesus met a great temp- 
tation in the early days of his ministry, that 
he won a victory, and that Satan left him; 
but you will recall the added words, " for a 
season." Temptation was defeated, not an- 
nihilated; it returned to him again. So 
with us, we may win victories, but we are 
not discharged from the war; we may get 
where the mastery of it is easier, and 
where the frequent conflicts are short and 
successful, but we can never say, " Now I 
am done with conflict." And, if we could 
truthfully say it, we are never done with 
duty. There is always more work for us 
to do; and, as we grow in our power to 
do, the responsibility becomes greater. Our 
Lord did not say of the man who brought 
ten talents to his master that the master 
said : " Well done, thou good and faithful 
servant, you shall be retired on a pension," 
but he said, " You shall be ruler over ten 
cities." The only man who was retired 
from service was the man who hid his 
talent. 1 This is the universal way in the 
Christian kingdom; success calls for more 

1 Luke 19 : 26, 



136 Tillage of the Heart 

success. So, when a man has gained the 
power to do some things well, he is pressed 
to undertake more. 

Because of this unlimited field of work, 
this never finished task of perfecting holi- 
ness, honest, faithful men sometimes get 
weary. If this is true in your case, it need 
not give you any sense of fear or morti- 
fication. It is not sinful to get weary in 
any other department of life, why should it 
be so in this ? If we only get weary in well- 
doing, and do not get weary of well-doing, 
it brings no condemnation. 

Between the difficulty of our task in 
" subduing imaginations and every high 
thing which exalteth itself against the 
knowledge of God/' and the weariness 
which comes from the work, the best of 
people often cry out, " Who is sufficient for 
these things ? " How shall we obtain that 
power which we must have to carry this 
load ? and where shall we get the endurance 
to keep up this lifelong strenuosity of en- 
deavor? Pleasant as the work is, we need 
reenforcement of strength. If any one is 
to be of real service he must bring to us a 
good, clear word about the practical sources 
of power to win." 



The Power to Win 137 

This is what I most earnestly desire to 
do this morning. And the first great 
thought to which I would call your atten- 
tion is, that the strength we need is always 
from God, and always through Jesus. 
There are those who say with sincerity, 
" We believe in God the Father almighty, 
maker of heaven and earth " ; but they stop 
there. They say, " Well, we do not know 
about Jesus. God we know, but Jesus is as 
yet a mystery to us. There are many things 
in this New Testament about which we are 
in perplexity." To all such we must say 
that they will have no power to win the vic- 
tories which the Christian expects to win. 
We may not say that they have no power 
at all, but we say that the great power of 
God comes through Jesus. The Christian 
life is always a partnership life with him. 
He began the work. We love him because 
he first loved us. This is the testimony of 
all who read well the page of their own 
heart history. No Christian remembers 
starting out to find the truth of the Chris- 
tian experience on what we call, in the com- 
mon speech, " his own hook." It was al- 
ways in response to an inside call. 

It is written in the book of Hebrews, 



138 Tillage of the Heart 

" We, brethren, are children of promise." 
What does that mean ? It means this : God 
promised to come into history and give to 
Abraham a son by processes extra human, 
so that whenever they saw Isaac, they 
would not only think of him as their son, 
but, in a sense, as God's son ; and he would 
always remind them of God's interest in 
them, and so bind them to him. He had a 
sort of triple parentage; the earthly two 
and the heavenly one— a child of two 
worlds. So, also, Samuel was a " child of 
promise." God sent into the ordinary 
course of things an influence which gave a 
son to her who had no human hope of one. 
Thus every one who saw Samuel and knew 
the meaning of his name — " God's gift " — 
would be reminded that God was a friend to 
Israel. This name — " child of promise " — 
meant that God had come into the case in 
a manner out of the usual natural manner. ' 
He had not put the natural constitution 
which he had given to mankind out of com- 
mission while he made a new race of beings 
by some other process, and thus practically 
ignored mankind; but he honored the mar- 
riage relation, and motherhood, and father- 
hood, and home, and church, by working in 



The Power to Win 139 

these channels, and imparted to them an 
unusual power. And now the writer of 
Hebrews says that Christians are " children 
of promise " ; that is, we are in a sense a 
new race ; we have a new set of experiences, 
which did not originate with ourselves; we 
are inextricably mingled with them, but 
there has been a voice and a power in us 
which is not of us. Our Christian life, 
such as it has been, is the sum of our ex- 
periences with that power; if we have had 
a sense of being lost, that power brought it 
to us ; men do not feel that sense because the 
minister tells them so ; they may be irritated 
by his words, but not humbled; they may 
have a poor opinion of themselves, but 
it gives them no concern. It is when the 
divine Spirit comes into action that men 
feel lost. Paul said, " When the law came 
I died." 

And if we have had any victories over 
evil, and made any progress in moral life; 
if our vision of things spiritual has become 
clearer and wider ; if " Christ seems dearer, 
and heaven seems nearer," we instinctively 
say: 

Thus far the Lord has led me on, 
Thus far his power prolonged my days. 



140 Tillage of the Heart 

The blessed companionship which has 
made our life journey so far a pleasant one, 
has been the extra human presence with us 
of that which the psalmist calls in the 
Twenty-third Psalm, " My shepherd " ; and 
the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Psalm 
is our song of deliverance : 

If it had not been the Lord who was on our 
side, now may Israel say; . . Then the waters 
had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over 
our soul. . . Our help is in the name of the Lord. 

This experience is the foundation of what 
we have as our hope for help. It is 
so trite, and so common, that I almost 
shrink from saying it. But there is no 
other thing to say. We get God's help 
through faith in Jesus Christ. 

Men, outside of the Jewish nation, studied 
ethics in great earnestness, but they did 
not catch a far-off glimpse of the crown- 
ing beauties of the kind of life which the 
prophets pleaded for and the psalmists sung 
about. The thirty-first chapter of Job out- 
shines the whole Grecian and Roman world. 
It needed the men who knew Jehovah to 
give the best elements to ethics. And when 
Christ came, he added a luster to the Old 



The Power to Win 141 

Testament ideas which makes them ethically 
the light of the world. 

But you are ready to reply : " Yes ; but 
how does Christ help us? How does this 
power come ? and how do we feel when it is 
come ? We read books about " power for 
service " ; and the " enduement of power," 
and the " pentecostal power/' What does 
all this mean " 

I do not wish to be controversial, nor to 
be critical of others any more than is neces- 
sary to make my thought plain to you. 
But I must confess at once that I have no 
personal experience of some of the things 
which are written on this subject. They are 
in a realm into which I never have entered, 
and do not expect to enter. I do not be- 
lieve that the Scriptures promise me any 
such experiences. I do not believe that for 
the perfection of the Christian life they are 
either necessary or helpful. For myself 1 
prefer to know God through the faculties he 
gave rather than to have some exceptional 
and unhuman source opened to me, by 
which I can learn of him without my own 
thinking. It is one of the great joys of life 
to think out a good conclusion. I prefer to 
love God because I have seen his goodness, 



142 Tillage of the Heart 

and felt his love in the same way that I 
learn to love my fellow-men, but more deep- 
ly because he is more worthy than they. I 
do not expect to love God or Christ in any 
other way. If my eyes can be opened to 
see his goodness, I will be thankful. 

Then we must notice that strange power 
which sometimes comes to some people — 
that which used to be called in the lan- 
guage of the old-fashioned camp-meet- 
ing, " the power," in which there was a 
great nervous excitement, and bodily re- 
sults which even to-day are not explained. 
That power, whatever it may have been, is 
not the kind of power to help us in this 
" tillage of the heart." It never made 
men more kind, or truthful, or honest, or 
industrious. The real " power to win " has 
no physical sign. It is known only by its 
results in moral conduct. The mysterious 
forces of nature which make wheat grow 
have no sign or measure; no scientist can 
weigh or measure them; they cannot be 
touched, tasted, or handled. If a man had 
not seen the wonder of vegetation by which 
a barren field becomes a garden of beauty, 
no scientist would ever have discovered the 
" life force." It lies there as secret as the 



The Power to Win 143 

" hidden decrees of God," absolutely un- 
known to man. But when the seed is put 
in the ground, at once it sprouts and grows. 
Then we know that the seed was " alive." 
So, in this matter of the cultivation of 
graces in the heart, we do not have any 
physical manifestation of the power. But 
when a Christian man, under the sense of 
duty, takes up a task, the power to do it 
comes with the taking up. The gift of the 
power is contemporaneous with the act of 
duty. 

We cannot, therefore, store up power; it 
will come as needed. You remember the 
manna was not to be stored up. Whatever 
was left over after the daily wants were 
supplied, spoiled. That was a dramatic way 
to teach the same lesson that the Lord's 
Prayer teaches : " Give us this day our 
bread for the day." Living grace, like 
dying grace, is not sent until it is needed. 

Coming now to the power itself, we may 
say that it begins in a clearing, moral 
vision. 

Jesus said, " If ye continue in the truth, 
the truth will make you free." James 
wrote, " Of his own will he begat us with 
the word of truth." Peter wrote, " He 



144 Tillage of the Heart 

hath given all things which pertain to life 
and godliness through the knowledge of 
Christ." All this, and it is verified in ex- 
perience, tells us that the secret springs of 
power in us — springs which we did not 
know about any more than the Israelites 
knew of the water in the rock — are opened 
by the better knowledge of the facts of life. 

I suppose this is the truth Jesus was try- 
ing to impress on people when he healed the 
blind people. He gave the world to them 
by opening their eyes as a hint of his method 
in giving them heaven itself. Anything, 
then, which gives us better vision of the 
facts about God's character, and Christ's 
love, and our own need, is itself a source 
of power. Just as the shining sunlight 
quickens in the earth forces of vegetation 
which were latent, so Christian truth, stead- 
fastly held in mind, will awaken forces for 
good which will give us new victories. 

We find no instance in the Scriptures 
where God desired to make a man better 
that he did not begin by giving him a 
better knowledge of the facts in the case. 
Do you recall the prophet's words at Do- 
than? The young man was afraid of the 
Syrians; his teeth were chattering with 



The Power to Win 145 

fear. Then the prophet prayed, " O Lord, 
open the young man's eyes, and make him 
know that they that be with us are more 
than they that be with them." And the 
Lord showed to the young man the moun- 
tain full of chariots and horsemen. 2 Then 
he was brave, and was comforted. 

There was once a strong, fierce-hearted 
Saul, with inflexible purpose, w T ho had set 
out to stop a religious movement by im- 
prisoning all its adherents. He dragged men 
and women to prison without mercy because 
he thought that their religion was a delu- 
sion and a curse. But one day, as he was 
journeying to a distant city to carry out his 
purpose, he had a vision of Jesus. And a 
voice spoke to him and gave him one new 
idea: That idea was that Jesus was not 
an impostor, but a God-sent one. That 
vision changed the whole character of his 
life; he was not disobedient to it; he went 
on for years getting daily help until, as the 
Apostle Paul, in old age he laid down his 
life for the sake of the truth he had learned 
in his vision. 

Doctor Bushnell somewhere tells of a 
young man who was not of full mind. The 

3 2 Kings 6:17. 
K 



146 Tillage of the Heart 

boys troubled him, and made him angry 
continually; but all at once he became do- 
cile and self-controlled. He could not be 
made angry. When questioned about the 
matter, and asked what had made him so 
changed, the only reply that he could make 
was, " I have seen Jesus." That reply, 
from the half-witted boy, has in it the same 
truth which Paul learned. The clearer 
vision of Jesus gives the heart a new power 
for righteousness. John wrote, " We shall 
be like him, for we shall see him as he is " ; 
that implies that what we need to make us 
more like him is to see him with clearer 
vision. 

An old man, who had been a very right- 
eous sort of a man, became in his old age a 
Christian man. He said that he, while 
trying to live right, had overlooked and 
left out one thing. When asked what that 
was, he said, " The Lord Jesus." A new 
view of Jesus opened for him a new life. 
It brought new motives, new power, new 
hopes. 

Do you not recall the times when you 
saw no beauty in Christ ? and therefore you 
did not try to serve him. But when you did 
get some glimmering of his love, and pa- 



The Power to Win 147 

tience, and wisdom, did not there rise up in 
you a flood of gratitude and righteousness 
that gave you power over things which had 
been your master ? It was clearer vision that 
gave you increased power. Now, if that is 
true, then more clear vision would have 
given you more power. 

Again, we get power by association with 
Christian people. Perhaps the greatest mys- 
tery of our life is the power of one person 
over others. It is so subtle that we cannot 
follow it wholly; even in diseases it seems 
to have great power. But in the control 
over our soul's life it is marvelous. We are 
sometimes despondent, and a man comes in 
to see us ; he is not there long, but when he 
goes away we are in a wholly different 
attitude; his presence banished the blues. 
We feel wickedly cross at something some 
day ; a godly man visits us ; he does not dis- 
cuss our case at all, but when he goes away 
we feel ashamed of our previous ugliness of 
disposition, and resolve to overcome it. The 
minister is discouraged. He thinks, " No 
one is being converted, and those who have 
been are backsliding/' His face shows his 
depression. He begins to have a new inter- 
est in the advertisements for small farms. 



148 Tillage of the Heart 

He studies chicken raising for a week. 
Then he becomes interested in the commis- 
sions that life-insurance agents get. Life is 
aimless. But some fellow-minister comes in 
who has had a revival. Oh, he says, it is 
grand up at our place; children and adults 
are coming to the Saviour. I wish you 
could come up and help us a week. When 
that man goes out our prospective insurance 
agent gets him to his study, and prepares a 
sermon for next Sunday which is as cheer- 
ful as the song of a child. Personal in- 
fluence did it. This is what made the writer 
of Hebrews say, " Exhort one another/' 

If one goes to a service of worship in the 
church, joins in the songs, hears the word, 
and especially greets the people in a brother- 
ly spirit, this subtle influence of association 
with a company of people, actuated in the 
main by a courageous and hopeful faith, is 
certain to give him new strength for good ; 
it will be almost impossible for him to do 
this and not find his meannesses, if he 
has any, rebuked, and his good purposes 
strengthened. There is a real contagion of 
strength in it, to which few people are im- 
mune. The psalmist had felt this when he 
wrote : 



The Power to Win 149 

As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so 
panteth my soul after thee, O God, . . for I had 
gone with the multitude; I went with them to the 
house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, 
with a multitude that kept holy day. 8 

And the children of Israel understood it 
when they sang among their pilgrim songs, 
" I was glad when they said unto me, Let 
us go into the house of the Lord." 4 

I do not think it possible for a man to go 
to church with fair and open mind even for 
a month, and not be able to verify the state- 
ment that association with people in divine 
worship is to his religious life like " show- 
ers upon the mown meadows " ; it quickens 
all good ; rebukes all evil in him ; it awakens 
latent powers which reenforce him in his 
endeavors to cultivate good in his soul. 

Again, we find power in the exercise of 
what James called a " mature faith " with 
respect to our own specific faults — and ma- 
ture does not mean the same as large. 
A mature man need not weigh two hundred. 
James said, " faith without works is dead " ; 
and " By works is faith made mature " ; that 
is, the act of faith must go with the feeling 
of faith, if it is to be complete faith. That 

3 PS. 42. 4 Ps. 122. 



150 Tillage of the Heart 

man who had lain upon his bed with palsy 
might have had a possible faith; but he 
had no actual faith until he, at the word 
of Jesus, arose and took up his bed and 
walked. There was no preliminary feeling 
of life and power in his limbs; power to 
walk was contemporaneous with his own at- 
tempt to walk ; by that combination was his 
faith made complete. 

Suppose a man is stingy, and he wants 
to overcome it; he may feel that God will 
help him to do so; but if he does not put 
his hand into his pocket and give liberally, 
his faith will be disappointed. Suppose he 
has a sharp tongue; he must, by his joint 
effort with God, hold his tongue under 
provocation. Suppose he is quick-tempered ; 
he must gain power by keeping cool when it 
is hot all around him. This serious, deter- 
mined, persistent effort to correct faults is a 
source of power that never dries up. It is 
a part of Peter's counsel that we " add to 
our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge/' 
and so on ; 5 our own intelligent activity be- 
ing interwoven with confidence that God 
will help. 

We likewise find a source of power in 

5 2 Peter 1 : 5. 



The Power to Win 151 

quiet companionship with nature. The poet 
wrote : 

To him who in the love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language; for his gayer hours, 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile, 
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And gentle sympathy that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. 6 

Nothing is truer than that the soul which 
gets into quiet, thoughtful observation of 
nature is calmed and strengthened. It will 
give you great uplift to " get alone with 
God." Some of you live in the country, 
where the book of nature lies wide open ; I 
urge you not to overlook it; let the large- 
ness of your vision, and the boundlessness 
of your horizon keep you sensible of God's 
power. But some of you live in cities, 
where the hand of God seems to be largely 
hidden ; yet it need not be hidden from you. 

In the parks where man has put his 
ideas of arrangement, God still has his own 
unaided activity. The flowers that fill the 
air with fragrance tell of his love of beauty 
for its own sake ; the birds remind you that 

• Bryant, " Thanatopsis." 



152 Tillage of the Heart 

not one of them falls to the ground without 
him ; the affection they have for their young 
is his gift to them ; and does not God, who 
taught them love, know how to love his 
own? Then the outspreading skies that 
bend over us all alike, tell of his impartial 
grace; the rains that fall on the just and 
the unjust alike, assure us that he is not a 
respecter of persons; that he does not dis- 
criminate against any. 

It may be you cannot see the parks. Well, 
can you get a glimpse of the sun, or the 
stars? Then take time to look steadily at 
them often; think of their course, of their 
distance, of their exactness, their invariable 
faithfulness in coming and going on their 
mission; and recall that 

His very word of grace is strong 
As that which built the sky; 

The voice that rolls the stars along, 
Proclaims it from on high. 

Or repeat in glad unison with the psalm- 
ist, " The heavens declare the glory of God, 
and the firmament showeth his handiwork. 
Day unto day uttereth speech; night unto 
night showeth knowledge. There is no 
speech, no language; their voice is not 



The Power to Win 153 

heard; but their message has gone out 
throughout all the earth." 7 

Another source of power is the contem- 
plation of Jesus' character, and love for us. 
This is what lies back of the Roman Catholic 
use of the crucifix. They discovered long 
time ago that the thought of Jesus is both 
the inspiration to service, and the comfort in 
trouble. In the days when books were not 
made, and when reading was an unknown 
art, the crucifix was almost a whole New 
Testament. Around it gathered all the 
stories of Jesus, and the lessons of paintings. 
It concentrated the thought of people on 
him. I do not need that; you do not; but 
we can understand why it has for others 
great help. And we find power comes si- 
lently to us in times of trouble or tempta- 
tion if we think of Jesus' love and care. 
Think who he is, what he does for us and 
in us and with us. 

Again, the great all-comprehending source 
of power is prayer. By this we mean, not 
simply petition for help, but a trustful 
childlike laying before God in Jesus' name 
of all our life plans and troubles. I have 
spoken about the subtle influence of associ- 

7 Ps. 19. 



154 Tillage of the Heart 

ation with good men. I think that kind of 
influence is a typical illustration of the na- 
ture of prayer. It is prayer in the embryo. 
To talk with God face to face as did Abra- 
ham — oh, that brings a sense of uplift and 
courage which nothing else can approach! 
Philosophy does not take this into account ; 
it makes light of it; it raises questions con- 
cerning the immutable laws of the universe 
and the impossibility of God's taking no- 
tice, and all that sort of blind men's denial 
of things because they never have seen them. 
But psychology is coming to the defense 
of the gospel messages. To meditate on 
God, and to lay our plans before him in 
prayer, is the most effective psychological 
device for promoting Christlikeness. It is 
not God working against, nor without law, 
but through the most subtle laws of our 
being. Look at it a moment. If a man was 
asking God to help him in any undertaking, 
could he ask for help in one which he knew 
was wrong? Does not the habit of prayer 
then purify a man's aims? If a man be- 
lieves that God is helping him, can he cher- 
ish a doubt that he will succeed? Does not 
the habit of prayer banish fears ? " If God 
be for us, who can be against us ?" " God is 



The Power to Win 155 

our refuge and strength, a very present help 
in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, 
though the earth be removed, and though 
the mountains be carried into the midst of 
the sea, though the waters thereof roar and 
be troubled, though the mountains shake 
with the swelling thereof/' 8 If a man be- 
lieves that others with him are asking God 
for grace to be truly good, does not that 
fellowship in endeavor, and that common 
dependence on God create a sense of fel- 
lowship, and thus work for the neighborly 
love which we desire to possess ? " He is 
our peace, who hath made both one and 
broken down the middle wall of partition. ,, 9 
If a man feels that he is weak in moral 
force, but is permitted to ask God for it, 
and that God is an interested partner in 
his holy endeavors, is there any way in 
which he can come into that partnership ex- 
cept to pray? It seems to me that as the 
rivers are the assembling of the streams, so 
prayer gathers up and combines in one all 
the streams of power which can flow into 
our hearts ; and gives us the aid of God in 
our work ; and his aid is the " power to 
win." 

8 Ps. 46. ° Eph. 3, 



156 Tillage of the Heart 

To review our thought — we get our 
" power to win " from God through Jesus 
Christ. But this power does not come to us 
in a way that dishonors the constitution 
he gave us; but it works in us, utilizing 
every avenue by which our lives may be 
made " fruitful unto every good work." 
And of these avenues a knowledge of the 
truth is first; association with those actu- 
ated by like aims follows ; quiet companion- 
ship with nature helps ; faith is perfected by 
actual endeavor ; and all are to be permeated 
by a prayerful habit of mind. 

I am not unmindful that these sugges- 
tions lack a certain smack of mystery and 
a kind of supernaturalism which some crave. 
But we may rest in the assurance of our 
text: If we do these things, our tillage of 
the heart will not be barren nor unfruitful. 



VIII 

THE RESULTS OF OUR TILLAGE 

" We all with open face beholding as in a glass 
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
of the Lord" — 2 Cor. 3 : 18. 

IT is a great fascination in the study of 
physics to note the changes which may 
come to substances without destroying 
their essential natures. It is said that char- 
coal is pure carbon; and that pure carbon 
can be made into a brilliant, flashing dia- 
mond. Changed from black, lusterless 
charcoal to flashing jewel ! and carbon still. 
This piece of hard, cold substance is ice. 
Warm it, and it is water, which you may 
drink; warm it more and it will drive the 
engine which takes you to Chicago or to 
London; warm it still more and it may be- 
come an explosive gas which will shatter its 
prison and destroy its keeper. Changed 
from inert ice to almost infinite power ! 

Here is a pile of sandstone. Pulverize, 
and heat it, mix with a little lime and 

157 



158 Tillage of the Heart 

soda, and it becomes glass. Changed from 
opaque stone to transparent glass! 

Here is a mass of ore. Stamp and purify 
it, and we may have a bar of gold. 

Look, now, at the realm of vegetation. 
Here is this soil of the garden. It is 
plain democratic dirt. And some moisture 
has gotten into it — not eau de cologne, 
but simple rain-water. The combination is 
the same as that from which girls make 
mud pies, and which boys track on to the 
carpet — plain, plebeian mud, unpoetic and 
unpretty. But plant a little seed in it and 
wait awhile. That seed has no beauty, not 
much weight ; but it has leased the power of 
God for the summer. And in the season 
of it, behold, a flower of delicate pattern, 
beautiful color which no artist can match, 
and fragrance which defies the skill of the 
chemist! Changed from mud to mignon- 
ette! 

If now we pass from the realm of vege- 
tation to the sphere of animal life, we find 
equally wondrous changes. Two little boys 
came to me this summer and said : " Mr. 
Hobart, we have found something." So I 
went to see. Up in a tree, overhanging the 
path, was a little nest about as big as the 



The Results of Our Tillage 159 

half-shell of a large English walnut. In 
it were some small eggs. Six weeks after 
those eggs had changed into resplendent- 
hued, flitting hummingbirds, their wings 
moving with a rapidity we cannot esti- 
mate, and with a power, according to their 
weight, which man cannot equal by any of 
his inventions. 

Now, consider this babe. What a help- 
less piece of flesh it is ! It does not know 
the way to its own mouth. It does not 
know the mother who bore it. But wait 
awhile, and that same wondrous " thing " 
may sit as the arbiter in national ques- 
tions, or rule with wisdom and justice our 
own great nation. Changed from babe to 
manhood ! 

I am sure after this, which is so com- 
mon that we do not often think of its 
wonder, we ought not to stumble over the 
words of the text, " Changed into his im- 
age." 

And this change is the central thing in the 
Christian life. It is the final outcome of all 
our tillage of the heart. John wrote, " It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be, but 
when it does appear we shall be like him." J 

1 1 John. 



160 Tillage of the Heart 

And again it is written, " He will change 
our vile body that it may be fashioned like 
unto his glorious body." 2 Nothing can be 
more glorious than to be made like Him. 

This is the substance of the " hope of 
the gospel." 

In my school work I am often surprised 
to find how many students come there 
who have no clear idea of what the " hope " 
is. They know what the " faith of the gos- 
pel " is, but they are ignorant of its " hope." 
Many of them think that the Christian life 
is like a great river, and the Christian is a 
man in his boat going with the current. 
He does not know what experiences he will 
meet, nor how long they will last; he is 
only assured that the river runs to the sea, 
and he is on the river; so he will get to 
the sea after a time. But what he will 
have when he gets there he does not know. 
That is a correct spirit for faith; but it 
falls short of what is within his reach in 
the matter of definite anticipation of clear 
" hope." 

Some good degree of Christlikeness is a 
definite " hope " to which we may attain 
here and now. It is a definite haven into 

2 Phil. 3 : 21. 



The Results of Our Tillage 161 



t> 



which the river of our life may run before 
we sail the ocean of eternity. 

But I must say a word of personal char- 
acter here. I cannot speak about this with 
all the assurance I wish I could. I am not 
able to say that I know the outcome as well 
as I desire. My life is not all that it ought 
to be. But I can say this: The frigidity 
of my heart has been reached by the love 
of God. The snows have melted off; the 
streams are singing their spring songs. I 
have heard the song of the first bluebird 
and robin, which tells me that the Christian 
summer is approaching. I can see the tints 
of green on the trees and fields. My de- 
sires are toward him. Some new affections 
have been awakened. My choice of com- 
panions is for Christians. I want none 
but Christian books and thoughts. My am- 
bitions are toward Christ. Some of the 
old sins are dropping off like the clinging 
leaves of the oaks, which, though they de- 
fied the storms of winter, yield to the suns 
of spring. So much I testify from experi- 
ence. The rest comes from observation and 
from the Book. 

Consider now what this means when 
translated into language of everyday life. 



1 62 Tillage of the Heart 

It says to the man with a quick temper 
that he may gain control of it. It has been 
done in thousands of cases. It tells the man 
with a selfish spirit that he may come to 
have that mind in him which was in Christ 
Jesus. It says to you who think yourselves 
the least Christlike that you may become 
true saints. All saints were made out of 
the same sort of material that you are. You 
can be a man of real honest religion, not 
simply on Sundays, but all the year. Some 
of you have lost faith in men, and perhaps 
in yourselves. You may be like the Scotch- 
man who, when he read the psalm, " I said 
in my haste, All men are liars," added, 
" And if he had lived now he would have 
said it at his leisure." You are not like 
Christ in that. He never lost faith in you. 
It is a wondrous thing to read what he said 
to his preachers : " Go out and tell all men 
that if they will believe in me they shall be 
saved." And " saved " meant made into 
Christlike men and women. He would stand 
and look at the crowds which move along 
our streets, and say, " All these can be 
made into good men and good women if 
they will give me a chance at them." O 
you men and women who are discouraged 



The Results of Our Tillage 163 

about yourselves, behold I bring to you 
good tidings of great joy ! You can be made 
into good men and women. If you could 
not be changed into his image, then, to you, 
the gospel would be a failure, for that is 
exactly what it is for. If you are not 
changed into his image it is your fault, 
not his, for he can do it. The heart can 
be made clean, the will can be made strong, 
the sympathy can be made broad, the faith 
may become unfailing. 

Think not that you are an exception. 
There are no exceptions with God. Jesus 
reasoned with a logic which is conclusive, 
when he said : " I came down to do the 
will of him that sent me. This is the will of 
him that sent me, that every one who 
seeth the Son and believeth shall have 
eternal life. Therefore him that cometh 
to me I will in no wise cast out." s But we 
are not to put off the victories until some 
other world. Some of you feel that you are 
of so small account in this world's affairs 
that you are not much thought of by him. 
But he always taught that God sent him, 
and he himself came, to seek and to save 
the lost. The more you are lost the more 

8 John 6. 



1 64 Tillage of the Heart 

he longs to bring you home. If all this 
church were saints except you, he would 
leave them to make you into his image, for 
he said so. 4 

But I presume that you are thinking, " Oh, 
the minister is enthusiastic, but we must dis- 
count his words some. Why should you 
discount them? Is it because God is not able 
to change you? I know you would not 
deny his power. Is it because he does not 
want to do it? He came to earth for that 
very purpose. But you say, " Why has he 
not done it before this ? " And there you 
touch the kernel of the matter. The reason 
is that you have not been made to think 
that it was possible in your case. Like 
many others, you have come to think it is 
rather too much to say that you can be 
Christlike. But he does not think it is too 
much. He thinks it is too little for you not 
to be so. The truth is that all along the 
line of history men have been slow to expect 
what he is ready to give. In the times of 
Isaiah there were promises of good things 
so great that the people could not believe. 
" Who hath believed our report, and to 
whom hath the arm of the Lord been re- 

* Luke 15:4. 



The Results of Our Tillage 165 

vealed ? " said the prophet. 5 The sixtieth 
chapter of that prophet's writing is given to 
making them see the greatness of the power 
of God. So also in the letter of Paul to 
the Ephesians, after telling of the great pur- 
poses of God in Christ he adds : " I pray 
that the eyes of your hearts may be en- 
lightened, that ye may know the hope of 
his calling; the glory of his inheritance; 
and the power of God toward you/' 6 Then 
he gives them a measure of that power as 
he says, " in that he hath raised up Christ 
from the dead and set him at his own right 
hand, far above all authority and power and 
dominion, and every name that is named." 
Are you so weak or so wicked that he who 
can raise the dead cannot give you victory? 
No! we cannot overstate the hope we have 
a right to cherish — that Christ will give us 
power to be Christlike here and now. 

I state it strongly because it needs to be 
impressed upon us all. We yield too easily 
to the notion that we cannot be much better 
than we are. 

But we must take the whole text into our 
thought. It says into his " image," not 
into his " equal." We are miniatures of him 

5 Isa. 51. 6 Eph. 1 : 14. 



1 66 Tillage of the Heart 

photographed down to smaller size. We 
have some of all the graces that beautify 
him. " Grace for grace." If he is kind, so 
are we. If he is true and loyal to God, so 
we will be unflinching in our devotion. 
Does he love all men ; we will not shut out 
any class of mankind from our sympathies. 
Did he have hope; we will not deny our 
hearts an ardent expectancy of things to 
come. 

But again, the text says, " From glory 
to glory " ; that is, progressively. Christ- 
likeness does not come to us all at once. 
We see an apple tree in the spring, and 
there is nothing but little hard, green nubs 
on the limbs, where fruit will be, not fit for 
animals to eat. A little later no one wants 
them except boys, and they ought not to 
have them. Later they hang, ripe and 
luscious, the delight of those for whom they 
have grown. So Christlikeness grows on 
toward completeness. Peter the apostle was 
without doubt at first a swearing, fight- 
ing fisherman. Even when he was a disciple 
Jesus told him he savored not of God, but 
of evil. After he w r as an apostle he swore 
three times that he did not belong to Jesus' 
company. A green apple yet! But when 



The Results of Our Tillage 167 

he wrote his First Epistle, he was ripe for 
the Master's use. 

Paul grew in grace and knowledge. At 
first he thought he would stay in Jerusalem. 
He was sure that he could turn them all to 
the Saviour. But God told him to get out 
of the city and go to the Gentiles. And 
even then, for a time, he said he " knew 
Christ after the flesh." That is, his con- 
ceptions of the Messiah were of a Jewish 
sort. The Christ was to be a national king. 
" But now," he says, " I know him so no 
more." He was ripening. And when at 
last he lay in his Roman prison, waiting for 
his trial, he had become the broad-minded 
author of the Ephesian letter, and all 
Jewish narrowness is banished forever. 
Ripened under the sun of trial and respon- 
sibility ! 

This is our comfort: we can be better 
next year than we are now. If I should 
come back here next year all those who 
have submitted themselves under the mighty 
hand of God will be richer in experience 
and riper in character than now. 

" Even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 
That is the working force. Let no man be 
discouraged. He that begun this work will 



1 68 Tillage of the Heart 



*& 



carry it on until he has completed it. And 
each year will see advancement. I urge you 
to believe that you can, and resolve that you 
will, be Christlike now. 



P. S. — You do not need remain a weak, 
uncertain Christian. Help is within reach. 



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